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HOW TO HELP 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd 

TORONTO 



HOW TO HELP 



A MANUAL OF 
PRACTICAL CHARITY 



BY 
MARY CONYNGTON, M. A. 



Bzto Sotfc 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1909 

All rights reserved 






Copyright, 1909 
Br THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 



Set up and electrotyped. Published December, 1909. 



THE MASON-HENRY PBESS 

SYBACUSE, NEW YOBK 



©CI.A252964 



Co jF, €♦ 



PREFACE 

In the three years since this book was first offered to 
the public, there has been little change in the principles 
and methods of organized charity. More and more the 
emphasis has been laid on preventive work. The pro- 
vision of large funds for purposes of investigation has 
made it possible to learn where prevention is needed and 
how it c^n be effected, while the growing closeness of 
cooperation between the different forces of philanthropy 
and reform has rendered practicable large social move- 
ments which ten years ago would have been regarded as 
purely chimerical. There has been a general and most 
desirable forward movement, but the stress has been laid 
rather on social justice than on philanthropy or charity. 

Hence it has not been necessary to make material 
changes in the subject matter of this book. Some chap- 
ters have received considerable additions; wherever the 
point of view has changed the latest opinions have been 
given; and the book as a whole has been carefully re- 
vised. Its general character, however, has been pre- 
served unaltered. 

Now, as in the first instance, How to Help is offered 
as a practical handbook, serviceable alike to busy men 
and women who feel some responsibility for right treat- 
ment of the want which appeals to them from every side, 
to the volunteer worker who wishes to make his help as 
effective as possible, and to the professional worker who 

vii 



viii PREFACE 

feels the need both of an office manual and of a con- 
venient summary for the guidance of inexperienced as- 
sistants and friendly visitors. To these and all others 
similarly engaged it is commended with the earnest hope 
that it may prove itself both useful and reliable, a ver- 
itable handbook for workers among the poor. 

Washington, D. G, 
September 25, 1909. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PART I. GENERAL PRINCIPLES 

I. The Work — Introductory I 

II. The Charity Organization Movement 7 

III. The Charity Organization Movement — Con- 

tinued 15 

IV. Social Workers. Requirements and Qualifi- 

cations 22 

V. Agencies for Philanthropic Work 33 

VI. Elementary Principles 41 

PART II. APPLICATION OF PRINCIPLES TO 
DEFINITE CASES 

VII. The Homeless Man 56 

VIII. The Homeless Woman , 77 

IX. Beggars and Impostors 88 

X. Care of Needy Families in their Homes : First 

Steps 103 

XL Care of Needy Families in their Homes : Find- 
ing Work 120 

XII. Care of Needy Families: Intemperance 137 

ix 



x TABLE OF CONTENTS 

XIII. Care of Needy Families : Desertion 148 

XIV. Standard of Living 162 

XV. Widows with Children 185 

XVI. Concerning Children 196 

XVII. Care of the Aged 220 

XVIII. Special Cases : Feeble-Mindedness, etc 229 

XIX. Special Cases : Consumptives 241 

PART III. SOCIAL AND PREVENTIVE WORK 

XX. Penny Provident Work 252 

XXI. Fresh Air and Summer Work 263 

XXII. Home Library Clubs 276 

XXIII. Boys' Clubs 286 

XXIV. Industrial and Educational Classes 296 

XXV. Club Work Among Adults 305 

XXVI. Social Settlements 316 

PART IV. GENERAL 

XXVII. Concerning Giving 326 

XXVIII. Indirect Service 342 

XXIX. Some Practical Suggestions 352 

APPENDIX 362 



HOW TO HELP 



PART I. — General Principles 
CHAPTER I 

THE WORK INTRODUCTORY 

The history of philanthropic effort during the nine- 
teenth century presents some curious features, and one 
of the most striking is the rapid change which took place 
during its last thirty years. If we look over the litera- 
ture of the earlier part of the century we shall find a well 
developed tradition of what charitable effort should be. 
Like many other ideals of the period, it was simple and 
well defined. It was largely religious in origin, and in 
its outward manifestation contented itself with allevia- 
tion or cure, giving little thought to prevention. Miss 
Yonge's very human and charming heroines, for instance, 
help the poor because it is a religious duty to give to the 
weaker brethren, or, rather, to be perfectly fair, because 
they can best express their love for their Master by 
giving to these, His poor. The problem of charitable 
relief takes a very simple form to their eyes. They live 
among people of their own race whom they have known 
all their days. They know every detail of their lives; 
they understand their habits of thought and their attitude 
toward the world. They give with a full knowledge of 
how far the character of the poor is an element in their 
poverty, and what will be the probable effect of their 



2 HOW TO HELP 

gifts. Above all they are not assailed by any doubts 
as to whether these poor ought to be poor. The con- 
ception of social justice is as foreign to them as the 
term itself. They accept it as part of the divine order 
that some should have and some should want and no 
thought of altering social conditions crosses their minds. 

Holding these views, they naturally found charity a 
word of easy definition. To be benevolent involved 
giving money and time and thought along certain well 
understood lines. The poor were to be looked after and 
kindly treated; schools, naturally church schools, should 
be established among them, that the children might learn 
their catechism and acquire a limited knowledge of read- 
ing and sewing; a conscientious landlord should not 
allow his villages to fall into notoriously unhygienic 
condition, nor oppress his laborers unduly. In addition, 
it was right to carry broths, medicines and jellies to the 
sick, and to give blankets and coals to the old and infirm ; 
to give food and shelter to the passing beggar; to make 
clothes for children and to give several school feasts 
yearly; and these efforts, with, of course, a due amount 
of instruction and exhortation bestowed upon all the 
beneficiaries, comprised the whole duty of philanthropic 
man. 

It would be entirely inaccurate to say that this was 
the only conception of charity. During the period when 
this ideal held sway, Lord Shaftesbury was doing his 
magnificent work; Dr. Chalmers was perfecting his sys- 
tem of neighborhood help, a system unsurpassed by any 
later developments ; Maurice and Kingsley were calling 
attention to the social conditions which held thousands 
in enforced poverty; the absolute necessity of changes 
in the poor laws was forcing the problem of poverty 



INTRODUCTORY 3 

upon all students of public questions. Forces were at 
work which would in time lead to a wider and more 
thorough-going view of want, its causes and remedies. 
But the conception described above was the one which 
had gained the popular ear; it was set forth in novels 
and advocated in sermons and praised in essays, and 
taken for granted in appeals for charitable purposes, 
until it may fairly be claimed that this was the common 
understanding of what charity should be; and so firmly 
rooted was this ideal that it maintained its hold for years 
and years after the conditions which justified it had 
passed away, and after it had become actively mis- 
chievous. 

In our own country a similar conception had been 
evolved from the conditions of rural life. The well-to-do 
people of the little towns knew their neighbors, root and 
branch. If any one were in want, every one in town 
knew whether it was misfortune or fault which lay back 
of the immediate need. The relations between rich and 
poor were close and personal; help could be given with- 
out patronage on the one side or humiliation on the 
other. And here again grew up a conception of chari- 
table activity direct, simple, concrete. "Give to him that 
asketh of thee, and from him that would borrow of thee 
turn not thou away," was a more immediately practicable 
ideal when each man knew his neighbor, and why he 
needed to ask, and what he would do with the loan when 
secured. And like the English ideal of charity, which 
it closely resembled, this conception took root in literature 
and in the minds of the people, and held its place firmly, 
while economic, industrial and social conditions were 
undergoing the most momentous changes the world has 



4 HOW TO HELP 

known, and the forms of society to which it was adapted 
were passing utterly away. 

In the early seventies the charitable people of the 
large cities waked up to the fact that this ideal was no 
longer practicable, and that the attempt to apply it to 
existing conditions had brought about a state of affairs 
among the poor which was nothing less than terrible. 
The exodus from the country to the city, the huge tide 
of illiterate immigration, then just becoming a serious 
problem, the reaction from the war and the period of 
inflation which followed it, the change in industrial 
methods which was substituting large companies for 
private employers and trusts for large companies, — all 
these things were filling the cities with impoverished 
strangers, and throwing on the charitable societies a 
burden for which they were totally unprepared. 

No blame could be attached to these societies for 
their failure to meet the situation. They had been 
designed to carry out the ideals formed in earlier days 
under simpler conditions. They were wholly unfitted 
for this new order in which giver and receiver were 
strangers in the fullest sense of the word, in which the 
very characters and habits of thought of the newcomers 
were as foreign to their helpers as their language. 
Churches and societies and individual workers strug- 
gled bravely, but their efforts seemed lost in the huge 
mass of want and wrong and helplessness. No one 
knew what any one else was doing, unless by accident ; 
the poor who put themselves forward might be helped; 
the poor who kept their self-respect and refused to beg 
suffered unseen. Most of the work done was alleviative, 
almost none preventive. Street begging was permitted, 
practically encouraged. Tenements of miserable con- 



INTRODUCTORY 5 

struction and unspeakably insanitary, made home life a 
mockery for thousands. Children were growing up 
under conditions which inevitably sapped their physical 
strength and their moral fibre. Men and women made 
their living by beggary, and saw in each new child an 
added source of income, because a baby gave additional 
force to their plea for alms. 

Discouraging as were these conditions, the situation 
was further complicated by frequent and barefaced 
imposition on the part of those seeking help. The lack 
of cooperation among the helpers invited deception. If 
two relief-giving societies in the same district had no 
exchange of information, it was as easy to beg from 
the two as from one, and doubly profitable. It was 
equally easy to make the rounds of the different 
societies successively. One of the classic stories of the 
period is of a family who lived for an indefinite period 
on the repeated baptisms of the youngest baby. The 
mother, miserably dressed, would present herself at 
some clergyman's house. She belonged to his faith, she 
said, and she had a baby she wanted baptized, but she 
was not decently dressed herself, and she had no clothes 
for the little one, so she could not bring it to the church ; 
would not the clergyman, in view of these circumstance^ 
come to her house and baptize it? Naturally, the clergy- 
man would and did; and naturally, also he would be so 
much touched by the scene of distress and destitution 
there presented that he would send the workers of his 
church to help, giving money and clothing. Aid would 
be continued for weeks, and by the time the people of 
that church were convinced that the family were idle 
and drunken, and that help given them was thrown 
away, the mother would be ready to apply to some 



6 HOW TO HELP 

other clergyman, the baby would be baptized again 
and the whole round gone through with once more. 
The trick was discovered by accident, but no one ever 
knew how often that infant had been baptized. 



CHAPTER II 

THE CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 

By the early seventies the situation outlined in the 
last chapter had become so bad that its improvement 
was inevitable. The very seriousness of the problem 
called forth the best thought which students of public 
questions could give, and roused philanthropists to a 
determined effort to cope with its difficulties. As a 
result of this effort came into being what is known as 
the charity organization movement. This movement 
has so profoundly influenced all the social thought of 
the day that although its history cannot be traced here, 
some attention must be given to its development and its 
changing attitude toward the problems of poverty. 

Primarily, this movement was an endeavor to unite 
the disintegrated forces of good, to substitute combined 
for independent and often antagonistic action, to bring 
into philanthropy the methods of organization and 
cooperation which had proved so effective in the busi- 
ness world, and to find new ways, adapted to the 
changed conditions, of applying the old principles of 
charity and good will. Like many another movement 
it has accomplished far more than its originators had in 
mind, and has outgrown the modest conception of its 
functions with which it was formed. 

The original intention was not to form a new organ- 
ization, but merely to unite those already existing. 
Delegates from the charitable societies of a given place 
were invited to meet and form a central board, which 

7 



8 HOW TO HELP 

should be the Charity Organization Society. Under the 
direction of this board, rooms should be engaged and 
workers employed who should give all their time to 
serving the charitable interests of the city. To prevent 
duplication of effort, each society was invited to file in 
the central office the names of all those it was helping, 
and to report new applications made to it for aid. The 
officers and employees of the central board were to be 
ready at all times to investigate the circumstances of 
anyone applying for help, and to report the facts of the 
situation to the person or society making the request for 
investigation. If this person or society did not feel able 
to give the help needed, it was the further duty of the 
organization to strive to secure it elsewhere. Represen- 
tatives of the different societies were invited to meet 
frequently with the central board in order to discuss the 
best way of meeting individual cases of need, or of deal- 
ing with problems of a general nature. 

Moreover, it was understood that at the central office 
a careful record should be made of each case handled, 
with a full account of the circumstances existing when 
the case was first reported, together with the different 
methods of treatment attempted, and their success or 
failure. And the underlying motive of all effort on the 
part of the Charity Organization Society should be not 
merely to relieve the present want, but to find out and 
remove the causes leading to that want, in the hope of 
restoring the needy person or family to an independent 
position in society. 

It is evident that there was nothing very startling in 
all this. It was merely an attempt to apply common 
sense and organized effort to the relief of distress. But 
it was so well adapted to its purpose that it met with 



THE CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 9 

astonishing success. Beginning, among English-speak- 
ing people, with the formation of the first Charity 
Organization Society in London in 1868, the movement 
has spread rapidly and widely. In our own country in 
the little more than thirty years of its existence (the first 
society of the kind was organized in Buffalo, in 1877), it 
has been adopted in something like a hundred and forty 
cities, scattered throughout the United States and its 
island dependencies. It supports magazines and papers 
devoted to its special interests ; it has maintained classes 
for training in philanthropic work, which have de- 
veloped into three independent schools for such train- 
ing, and have led to the establishment of innumerable 
courses of the kind in colleges and universities ; it has 
created a new profession, and has added to the senti- 
ment of charity the science of philanthropy. 

In doing all this the movement has itself been pro- 
foundly modified. Three distinct phases, which might 
be called the repressive, the discriminative and the 
constructive, are visible in its history, each developing 
naturally from the preceding and leading in logical 
sequence to the next. The development has not been 
equally rapid in all parts of the country, so that the 
different phases still exist and may be studied in actual 
conditions. These three stages are sufficiently impor- 
tant in their bearing on the present situation to merit 
some consideration. 

Perhaps it might be well to say that the second and 
third phases are coexistent. In the latest development 
of the movement the discriminative attitude is main- 
tained toward the individual case of need, but to this 
has been added the wider view which takes account of 
the whole social field, and strives to check the causes 



IO HOW TO HELP 

without himself which tend to reduce the individual to 
poverty. 

The repressive attitude sprang directly from the 
causes leading to the inauguration of the charity organ- 
ization movement. So much harm had been done by 
indiscriminate giving, the dangers of pauperizing and 
the evils of pauperism were so directly evident, that it 
was natural there should be an emphasis, even an undue 
emphasis, on the perils attending the giving of material 
relief, and an over-insistence on the need of inculcating 
in season and out of season self-reliance and self- 
dependence as the highest duties of the poor. It was 
so important to preach the doctrine that no help should 
be given without full knowledge of the circumstances 
that occasionally the emphasis was misplaced, and the 
listener gained the impression that no help should be 
given at all. In order to form an adequate plan of 
relief it was essential that all the facts possible should be 
learned, but the insistence upon this led some to forget 
the purpose, and to look upon the gathering of facts as 
in itself useful, to consider it an end and not a means. 
Moreover, it is always easier to adopt the catchwords, 
the technicalities of a movement than to act upon its 
spirit. Many took up the new phraseology and talked 
glibly about the need of investigation and the danger of 
pauperizing, with very little idea of what the one meant, 
or how the other was to be avoided. 

These mistakes were not entirely confined to the 
careless and the superficial. Even among the more 
intelligent supporters of the new methods there were 
undoubtedly at times short-sightedness, a tendency to 
look upon the suppression of symptoms as the cure of 
the disease, and a failure to take the long view of an 



THE CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT n 

applicant's welfare. This was natural, for it was an 
arduous task which the ideal demanded from the 
worker. To find out the real needs of the poor, and to 
form and carry out a plan which, while relieving their 
present wants, should lead to their restoration to inde- 
pendence, uninjured morally or physically by the experi- 
ence they had gone through, required not only patience 
and intelligence and a genuine interest, but practical 
training, constructive ability and a willingness to sub- 
ordinate the immediate good to a future better. It was 
a far easier thing to feel that self-support is a normal 
condition, that whoever failed to accomplish it must be 
to blame, and to enforce self-reliance at the risk, as it 
was then said, of temporary suffering, a suffering which 
later knowledge showed might often cause real and 
lasting injury to the victim. 

In view of these things, it is possible that in its earlier 
stages the charity organization movement merited, at 
times and to some degree, the familiar reproaches of 
hard-heartedness, of rigidity and of over systematiza- 
tion. Nevertheless, it had within itself two principles 
which saved it from going to pieces on the rock of 
repression and which led to the development of what 
we have called the discriminative phase. It insisted not 
only on a thorough knowledge of the circumstances of 
an applicant, together with a careful record of what was 
done for him and of the results of this course ; but it 
further urged the necessity of a really friendly and per- 
sonal interest in each applicant as the only means 
through which help could be rendered intelligently and 
successfully, an interest which it sought to supply by the 
friendly visitor. These two principles worked together, 
reenforcing one another, and leading toward a common 



12 HOW TO HELP 

end. As the agent studied the record of cases extending 
over years, and as the friendly visitor followed the for- 
tunes of successive families, it was inevitable that each 
should come to see that there are times when self-sup- 
port may not be an entirely desirable condition; when, 
in fact, it may be purchased at altogether too high a 
price. To take only one illustration, they came to see 
by actual and painful experience that when a family is 
kept from the need of receiving outside aid, whether by 
putting the children to work at too early an age, or by 
so over-working the mother that she cannot make a 
home, or by forcing children old enough to work into 
injurious trades, not only the family, but the com- 
munity is harmed, and the temporary independence 
secured by such means is apt to lead to serious poverty 
or wrongdoing later on. ; 

This careful record of case work and close study of 
the individual case, formed, in fact, nothing other than 
an application of the laboratory method to the problems 
of poverty. The large city furnished the material on 
which the worker must, whether he wished it or not, 
experiment ; and as the work went on from year to year, 
the accumulated records of these experiments furnished 
the most valuable mass of sociological data ever pro- 
vided for students of poverty. Studying these records, 
the movement passed naturally from its earlier fear of 
relief to the discriminative stage in which it looked upon 
material aid as a means to an end; important, it is true, 
but no more to be advocated or disapproved than a 
dozen other means. This attitude is equally removed 
from the old superficial view, beloved of the Christmas 
story writers, that the gift of turkeys and plum pud- 
dings and crisp ten dollar bills is all that is needed to 



THE CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 13 

right any social maladjustment, and the equally un- 
founded view which regarded money or material relief 
with an exaggerated fear as inevitably perilous to self- 
respect, and leading almost invariably to moral enfeeble- 
ment, if not to absolute pauperism. 

The movement has now reached a stage in which 
relief is looked upon as a means, dangerous if rashly 
handled, but having none the less a most important 
place in the category of available methods. It is recog- 
nized, however, that the facility with which temporary 
improvement may be secured by the use of money does 
expose the worker to the temptation of relying too 
much upon it; so added emphasis is laid upon the fact 
that giving material aid is never in itself sufficient. 
More and more insistence is placed upon the close, 
patient study of each case, the warm personal interest in 
the individual, the resourcefulness which will find the 
best way of making the most of each member of the 
family group, the comprehensive view which, keeping 
steadily in sight the reestablishment of the family as a 
whole, works toward that end, using material relief as 
only one of the means for this purpose, never losing 
heart nor giving up the family as "unworthy" until the 
goal is attained, and the ranks of the dependent have 
been diminished by one more group transferred to the 
army of the normally and healthfully self-supporting. 
That and that only is the ideal proposed by the move- 
ment, in its present discriminative stage, and to attain 
that end it makes use of any means which may be at 
hand. Material relief falls into its proper place, shorn 
of the fictitious importance once attached to it, and the 
emphasis is placed on the comprehensive view which 
takes into account all the factors of a situation, the 



I4 HOW TO HELP 

resourcefulness which sees the way to utilize them 
all, and the patience and kindly interest which will per- 
severe until the ideal becomes the real. Given these 
qualities, there is small danger that material relief will 
be abused. 



CHAPTER III 

THE CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT CONTINUED 

The close study of the individual case, and the care- 
ful preservation of the records of hundreds of other 
individual cases, led inevitably to a consideration of the 
causes of poverty en masse. The worker who dealt 
only with one family, or with twenty, might honestly 
feel that character was the determining factor in the 
social condition of each one of those families, and that 
only through improving the individual could his situa- 
tion be improved. The agent who dealt in the course 
of years with hundreds of families, the student who 
applied himself to the records of thousands, could not 
but observe that there were certain social conditions, 
various large general forces, operating to reduce people 
to poverty, regardless of their individual merits or 
demerits. Free will may prevail in the moral world, 
but it does not in the physical, and if a man dwells in 
a dark and unhealthful tenement, infected with tubercu- 
losis, if his work keeps him in unhealthy and depressing 
conditions, no amount of self-respect and earnest industry 
will ward off from him the danger of death from con- 
sumption, or from his children the likelihood of weak- 
ened constitutions and impaired strength to handicap 
them in their struggle against the environment which 
proved too much for him. 

This did not mean that the workers came to regard 
the people among whom they labored as merely help- 
less puppets. All imaginable stress, it was felt, should 

15 



i6 HOW TO HELP 

be laid on the personal equation, and no effort should 
be spared to make the individual energetic, industrious 
and forceful. But after all, there was an obvious short- 
sightedness in spending unlimited time in trying to 
raise families who had fallen into want above that want, 
while all the time nothing was done to check the causes 
which were inevitably year by year operating to bring 
more families into that same condition. Common sense 
demanded that while the efforts to improve the indi- 
vidual family were carried on unfalteringly, energy 
should also be directed to removing the preventable 
causes of want, and to stopping the stream of poverty 
at its source. As this ideal took form and became 
effective, the movement entered on its third and most 
important phase, which may be called the constructive 
stage. 

It is only within a very few years that this effort to 
remove all preventable causes of poverty has been made 
on a large scale, and with much prospect of success. It 
manifests itself along innumerable lines. The campaign 
against tuberculosis, the agitation for better tenements, 
the fight against child labor, the insistence on summer 
schools and playgrounds, the provision of means of 
recreation, the fresh air work among children and adults 
alike, the careful treatment of mendicancy in the larger 
cities, the establishment of trade schools and manual 
training classes, — these are only a few of its manifesta- 
tions. Some of these efforts would have been impracti- 
cable a generation ago. The problem of street begging, 
for instance, could not be constructively treated without 
the system of interurban help and information which 
has been established wherever charity organization 
societies are found. Child labor cannot be adequately 



THE CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 



17 



treated by local methods alone, and such troublesome 
questions as the deserting husband and the wandering 
family can be solved only by the united action of many 
forces. 

The marvelous development of this preventive work 
which characterizes the present stage of social activity 
has been rendered possible only by the growth of the 
principle of cooperation, which has formed so marked 
a feature of the charity organization movement. All 
over the world societies formed to study and relieve 
poverty are recording and exchanging the results of 
their efforts; national conferences, held at least annu- 
ally, are bringing the leaders of the work into close 
and inspiring contact; magazines, pamphlets, and 
weekly and monthly papers are constantly bringing to 
the public the latest discoveries ; and the worker in the 
remotest town or village may have, the advantage not 
only cf knowing the results which have been achieved 
by other workers along his chosen line of research, but 
of securing the instant cooperation of all the other 
workers, through their organized bodies, as soon as his 
work reaches outside of his own territory. Never before 
has it been possible for the forces of philanthropy to 
present such a united and aggressive front to the forces 
making for want and misery. No one, of course, sup- 
poses that poverty will be eradicated; but it is believed 
that it may be immensely diminished, and that a large 
part of the suffering which is due to social conditions 
rather than to the individual's fault may be abolished. 

Within a few years past this latest phase of the work 
has broadened out into a movement which transcends 
the limits of any definition of philanthropy with which 
we have hitherto been familiar, and which its supporters 

2 



18 HOW TO HELP 

claim should be looked upon rather as a program of 
social justice. Most of the schools of philanthropy 
carry on as part of their courses investigations into 
social conditions; the settlements have undertaken a 
great deal of work along the same lines ; and recently 
the gifts of Mrs. Russell Sage and others have made it 
possible to conduct similar researches on a scale entirely 
impossible until these means were available. A study 
of the data thus secured has led to a growing conviction 
that much of our poverty, inefficiency and even crimi- 
nality result from conditions for which the individual 
is not responsible, and which by himself he is powerless 
to affect. It is felt that social and industrial conditions 
are so adjusted that in too many cases the heaviest 
burden falls on those who are least able to bear it. 
Whole classes, it is believed, have been cut off from 
the equality of opportunity which democracy implies, 
and for the sake both of common justice and of the 
community welfare, these opportunities must be 
assured to them. To do this, the supporters of the 
movement admit, will require very considerable expendi- 
tures, but it is a question whether in the end there will 
not be a material saving. It is merely a matter of 
whether society chooses to spend its money in preven- 
tion or relief, in social justice or in charity and cor- 
rection. Indeed, they assert, there is really no question; 
we cannot afford not to take such measures ; enlightened 
economy requires the community to check these springs 
of preventable want at their source, and to seek in good 
earnest to secure to each of its members the chance of 
being sound mentally and physically, properly equipped 
to take his part in the struggle of life, and not handi- 



THE CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 



19 



capped by social or industrial conditions which load the 
dice against the weaker party. 

"No community/' says one of the prominent advo- 
cates of this movement, "is so poor that it can afford to 
permit typhoid for lack of a filtration plant, or inefficient 
children for lack of good schools, or criminals for lack 
of playgrounds while children are growing up, or way- 
ward girls for lack of protection, or exploited childhood 
for lack of a factory inspector, or industrial accidents 
for lack of a compensation law or an insurance system. 
These things are not luxuries. . . . We may send 
children to school, keep them out of factories, provide 
them with playgrounds, operate for their adenoids, and 
fit them for useful trades and occupations, or we may 
keep our hospitals and courts and prisons and charities 
going at their maximum capacity." 1 

This movement is as yet in its incipiency, but it is 
undoubtedly along its lines that the greatest progress 
of the next decade will take place. It is a movement, 
however, which concerns itself with general causes and 
deals with masses rather than with the individual. It 
springs from the charity organization movement, and is 
an extension of its principles, but can hardly be called 
a part of it. 

In looking over the development of charitable work 
within the last thirty years, it becomes evident that one 
and the same idea has been its underlying principle, but 
that there has been, so to speak, a shifting of the 
emphasis. The fundamental purpose has always been 
to remove the poor from dependency and to restore 
them to the ranks of the self-supporting. At first, stress 
was laid on restoring them in the shortest possible time 
to independence, and on running the least possible risk 

1 The Survey, April 10, 1909. 



20 HOW TO HELP 

of injuring their moral fibre by the administration of 
material relief. In the next stage, the ideal held up 
was to restore them to self-support in such a way that 
this should become their permanent condition, and that 
in doing it no injury should be wrought, either to society 
as a whole, or to the individual members of the group 
under consideration. In the third stage, while the second 
ideal still prevails for the person or family who has 
fallen into want, it has been supplemented by a vigorous 
effort to remove the social causes which may have con- 
tributed to this fall, and to keep others from suffering 
through these same conditions. 

It would be too harsh to say that the first stage dealt 
only with the removal of the outward symptoms of 
poverty, leaving unchecked the causes which produced 
it ; yet the practical working out of the earlier ideal 
often resulted thus. The second ideal cut much deeper, 
while the combination of the second and the third has 
produced the most comprehensive conception of chari- 
table work we have yet been able to imagine — a concep- 
tion which demands that each of the poor shall receive 
careful consideration, such help as he really needs in 
such quantities as to render him independent henceforth 
of similar help, that this shall be given in the way least 
likely to injure him, that so far as possible opportunities 
shall be opened to him to provide for himself without 
the need of outside assistance, and that above all, social 
conditions shall be so adjusted that he shall not be 
forced into want through no fault of his own. Whether 
character is cause and environment effect, or vice versa, 
the new philanthropy does not attempt to decide, but its 
aim is so to develop character that environment shall 
necessarily be improved, and so to improve environ- 



THE CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 2 I 

ment that character shall have a chance to develop. To 
restore the dependent to self-support, to enable the inde- 
pendent to maintain his self-reliance, to help both to find 
some higher meaning in life than the mere pursuit of 
food and clothing, and to give their children a fair 
chance of doing as well or better than their parents — 
such is the aim of the new philanthropy. 



CHAPTER IV 

social workers: requirements and qualifications 

"Charity is the privilege of thoughtful persons." 

— Jeffrey R.Brackett. 

The more serious study of poverty and the increas- 
ing endeavor to make all help remedial as well as 
alleviative have given much emphasis to the demand 
for trained workers. This demand is met from 
various sources. The Associated Charities of Boston 
for years maintained a system of training for would-be 
professional workers, but the first attempt to give 
systematic training on any large scale was the Summer 
School of Philanthropy, opened in 1898, under the 
direction of Dr. Philip W. Ayres, in connection with 
the New York Charity Organization Society. From 
this has developed the School of Philanthropy recently 
established in New York, giving a longer and more 
thorough course of instruction and practice than was 
possible in the Summer School. In Boston a School for 
Social Workers, maintained by Simmons College and 
Harvard University, was opened in 1904, and in Chicago 
the School of Civics and Philanthropy gives extended 
training for philanthropic or social work. In addition 
to these institutions, many if not most colleges and 
universities have added to their curriculum courses in 
applied sociology or in training of some practical kind, 
which have for their purpose the preparation for actual 
work, while almost every large charity organization 
society has some system of preparing workers. 



SOCIAL WORKERS: REQUIREMENTS 23 

Through these means the need for professional 
workers is being supplied, but there is a great demand 
for non-professional workers which is far from being 
satisfied. The professional worker alone can never do 
the whole work of philanthropy. He is useful, indeed, 
indispensable, as a leader, as a student, as an initiative 
force, as a general supervisor and correlator of the 
charitable work of a given community, but he can no 
more do all that is to be done than the officers of 
an army can themselves carry through a successful 
campaign. The volunteer worker is needed, in quan- 
tity, for a hundred different purposes, and since he is 
required in such numbers, it follows that he must, when 
first secured, be almost invariably an untrained and 
inexperienced worker. 

The attitude of the professional to the amateur worker 
has undergone several changes. Ten or fifteen years 
ago it was thought that the ideal combination was 
attained by setting untrained workers of any kind to 
what was known as friendly visiting, under the guid- 
ance of professionals. The friendly visitor was assigned 
to some family known to his society, with whom he — 
or more frequently she — essayed to form friendly rela- 
tions, with the purpose of enriching both lives, and 
especially of giving to the poorer friend the benefit of 
the visitor's greater breadth of view, wider experience, 
and, presumably, stronger character. The friendly 
visitor was expected to consult the professional worker 
regularly, and to take no important steps without his 
sanction. Thus the agent's knowledge and experience 
were extended over a far wider field than he could have 
covered alone, the inexperienced worker was trained by 
actual service without the risk of injuring his bene- 



24 HOW TO HELP 

ficiaries in the process, and the family visited had the 
advantage of both the agent's professional knowledge 
and the visitor's more intimate and personal friendli- 
ness. The theory was excellent, and there is no doubt 
that in practice much good work was thus done, yet 
somehow the plan has not proved a complete success. 
The friendly relation often proved somewhat artificial 
and Irittle, and though friendly visiting is still widely 
advocated and practiced, it is no longer looked upon 
as the complete solution of the problem of bringing 
together the House of Have and the House of Want. 

In the disappointment caused by the failure to realize 
all that was hoped from the system of friendly visiting, 
some professional workers have gone to the other 
extreme and displayed a certain tendency to look 
askance on any employment of amateurs. Some even go 
so far as to say that only a limited number of persons 
have the necessary qualifications for becoming workers 
among the poor, and that for the great multitude the 
only effective way of helping is to give their money to 
this gifted minority, making no effort to undertake per- 
sonal work, but supplying the funds for those qualified 
to perform it. Anyone who has seen the harm which a 
perfectly well-meaning but injudicious person may do 
when he attempts to help his poorer neighbor will feel 
that there is some justification for this view, but no one 
but an extremist will be ready to support the somewhat 
arrogant conclusion that only the specially trained and 
gifted should do personal work. Common sense and 
good feeling alike indicate that we have personal duties 
toward the less fortunate which cannot be discharged 
by the mere payment of money. Miss Addams has well 
pointed out that the awakening social conscience 



SOCIAL WORKERS: REQUIREMENTS 25 

demands of each something more than the individual 
uprightness, kindliness and well-doing which satisfied 
the earlier ideal. It is not enough to give ; we must 
also do, and any conception of the importance of the 
trained worker which shuts out from philanthropic 
activity the untrained, is a mischievous exaggeration 
which must in time work its own cure. 

The more complex problems, it is true, can best be 
handled by organized agencies working through trained 
employees, but in addition to these there exists a wide 
field of social and philanthropic activity which must either 
go untilled or be cared for by the "outsiders," the ordinary 
men rnd women whose time is well occupied with other 
duties, but who feel a certain responsibility toward the 
less fortunate, and who are not satisfied that they have 
done all they ought when they have referred an appli- 
cant to the nearest organized society. There is not a 
sufficiency of trained workers to do half or a quarter of 
what is to be done, and useful as their work is, perhaps 
its most important feature is that of showing others how 
to help. Also, in numerous places, trained workers are 
unknown, and the philanthropies of the neighborhood 
must depend solely upon volunteers. Every church is a 
center of benevolent activities, depending mostly upon 
the efforts of unpaid workers, who can take up such 
duties only as one part of an already busy life. Every 
pastor feels the importance of giving the young people 
of his church work to do among the poor, for the triple 
purpose of getting the work done, of developing the 
sympathies of the young people from a mere sentiment 
into an effective force, and of keeping up the supply of 
church workers. For all these reasons a large part of 
the philanthropy of today not only is being done by non- 



26 HOW TO HELP 

professional workers, but ought to be and will be so 
done. 

Yet there are one or two qualifications which are 
almost necessary, and several others which are highly 
important for anyone who contemplates undertaking any 
charitable work, even though his projected activity be 
small. The first and most important of all is seriousness 
of purpose. Such work means influence upon the lives 
of others, for good or for ill, and no one has a right to 
touch another's life carelessly or lightly. There is 
hardly any condemnation too strong for those who take 
up work among the poor as an amusement, giving and 
intending to give to it only the most casual thought, 
ready to drop whatever they have begun so soon as it 
becomes irksome, or, worse still, to carry it on inter- 
mittently as the fancy strikes them. Their work itself is 
bad, their example is thoroughly harmful, and their 
unreliability and inconsistency work out, sometimes, 
absolutely cruel consequences. He who would enter the 
field of philanthropic work must first count the cost. It 
may be that he can give but little time and thought, but 
that little should be given faithfully. 

Next to this essential steadiness of purpose, possibly 
the most useful characteristic is a sympathetic imagina- 
tion, which will permit the worker to share the point of 
view of those he is endeavoring to help. Whoever goes 
among the poor with a preconceived idea of what is the 
cause of their trouble and what should be its cure is 
liable to meet many disappointments. The poor obsti-* 
nately refuse to form one class, all amenable to the 
same treatment. Human nature is exceedingly con- 
spicuous among them, and the bed of Procrustes is no 
more available there than elsewhere. In most communi- 



SOCIAL WORKERS: REQUIREMENTS 27 

ties they come from a variety of nationalities; their 
inheritance and traditions differ from race to race; their 
standards of life, and more especially their social stand- 
ards, though quite as rigorous as the worker's, differ 
widely from his, and from each other's, and the kind of 
advice and help which is ideal for one family is thrown 
away upon the next. 

Self-evident as this appears to one accustomed to such 
work, it is far too often forgotten or ignored, with 
unfortunate consequences. The people who talk about 
the ingratitude or unreasonableness of the poor are apt 
to be people who have never appreciated this simple 
fact. For many good persons the Poor occupy the 
place which the economic man held among the econo- 
mists of a generation or two ago. The Poor, always 
with a capital, are supposed to be a receptive class, either 
in want through their own intemperance or thrift- 
lessness, in which case they are waiting to be reformed 
and set in the right path which they will thereafter fol- 
low steadily and gratefully; or else they have sunk to 
want through misfortune and ignorance, and are meekly 
waiting for some help and advice, which will be accepted 
with respectful appreciation, and in return for which 
they will unquestioningly follow out in all respects what- 
ever line their benefactor recommends. Naturally, those 
who hold such views — and the description is hardly 
exaggerated — will be speedily disillusioned, and since- 
their honest efforts are pretty sure to be wasted, it is 
only human nature on their side which makes them cer- 
tain that this is all the fault of the poor, and that nobody 
can do much for them ; "they are so unreasonable." Suc- 
cessful work among the poor can be based only upon 
some understanding of the temperament and needs of 



28 HOW TO HELP 

each individual family, and the worker must be on the 
alert to discover how one differs from another, what are 
the characteristics most likely to be found in a given 
nationality, what are the social standards governing the 
particular circle in which he is working, and what per- 
sonal peculiarities of the members of his group modify 
these general traits. The more completely he is able to 
enter into the view of those among whom he works, the 
more chance he has of bringing them over to his ideas, 
of strengthening their weak points, helping to develop 
their possibilities, and aiding them in a far truer and 
higher sense than by mere almsgiving. 

Next to sympathetic imagination, some sense of pro- 
portion is needed. There should be some power of 
seeing what is the highest practicable good attainable in 
each case, and details should be subordinated to the pur- 
suit of this end. It is not enough to do what will most 
immediately and obviously relieve the situation ; in fact, 
doing this may perhaps cause a far worse ill than that 
which it relieves. There is always a tendency to magnify 
present good and to underestimate future evil, and to 
the worker among the poor, economic independence 
looms so large that he is tempted to purchase it at any 
price. 

One of the most frequent illustrations of a lack of this 
sense of proportion is found in the attitude of many 
benevolent people toward child labor. A family is 
honestly in want, say through illness or accident to the 
normal breadwinners. There are children, not, it is true, 
of legal working age, but strong and well grown, quite 
able to become earners, and exceedingly anxious to do 
so. Is it not better, say the workers, to secure if possible 
an exemption from the law in such a case than to force 



SOCIAL WORKERS: REQUIREMENTS 29 

a self-respecting family to accept outside help? That is 
the most favorable statement of the case; too often, the 
family is in want through the desertion or wrongdoing 
of a parent, and those who are helping find it increas- 
ingly difficult to secure the aid needed; by bringing a 
little personal influence to bear one or two children can 
be slipped into employment somewhere, and the burden of 
the helpers lightened at the expense of the future strength 
and welfare of the child. The so-called charitable people 
concerned in the matter would probably admit the 
extreme importance of preserving children from too 
early employment, and the advantages of a strict enforce- 
ment of the labor laws in general, but the immediate 
necessities of the particular case blind them to the prin- 
ciples involved, and they unhesitatingly sacrifice the child 
to a need which could and should be met through other 
means. 

Sometimes this disproportionate emphasis on imme- 
diate need, or on one aspect of a question, works itself 
out in very curious fashion. In one instance a few years 
ago a small circle of workers found an old woman over 
seventy, who was about to be sent to the almshouse, to 
which she didn't at all wish to go. Their sympathies 
were stirred, and moreover they had just been reading 
certain treatises on philanthropy, and were much im- 
pressed with the evils of pauperization. Pauperization, 
they thought, of course meant being made a pauper, and 
if this old woman were sent to the almshouse she would 
certainly be pauperized; was there no way in which she 
could be saved from such a fate? So they bestirred 
themselves, and found that she had one relative living, 
an orphan granddaughter of thirteen. The girl had a 
good home with a family who had taken her into their 



30 HOW TO HELP 

household for what she could do, giving board and cloth- 
ing and sending her to school. She was happy and 
contented, and the family liked her; she would probably 
have a permanent home with them. The circle of 
workers also found that at that time there was a demand 
for girls for night work in a certain factory, and that 
this girl could within a short time from entering earn 
good wages, quite enough to support both her and her 
grandmother. 

Armed with these facts, the circle set themselves to 
work to make earnest representations to the family, to 
the girl, to the grandmother and to all acquaintances, 
and the change of occupation was effected. The grand- 
mother took a couple of rooms and kept house for the 
girl, who went into the factory, and the circle congratu- 
lated themselves that they had saved one person, at least, 
from becoming a pauper. So they had, but at what 
cost? The grandmother was over seventy; for good or 
for ill, her work was done, and all that was really 
required for her was humane care, which would have 
been received in the almshouse. But the girl was just 
beginning life. They had taken her from a place where 
she was leading a contented, healthy, normal existence, 
having a fair chance for an education, and receiving 
training in real home-making. They had subjected her, 
at the most critical period of her life, to the tremendous 
physical strain of night work ; they had cut her off from 
all chance of mental education, and shut her out from 
any possibility of preparation for the normal life of a 
woman as the center of a home ; indeed, in view of the 
effect of night work on growing girls, it is not too much 
to say that as far as in them lay they were deliberately 



SOCIAL WORKERS: REQUIREMENTS 31 

unfitting her for the duties of a wife and mother. But 
they had kept the old woman out of the almshouse. 

That was, of course, an extreme case, but in other 
forms the same problem is constantly coming up. Chil- 
dren are put into institutions because it is hard to secure 
the help which would make it possible to keep them with 
their mothers. Work is provided for married women, 
rather than for their husbands, because it is easier to 
make work for unskilled women than men, or because 
the husbands are idle or intemperate. Children old 
enough to be put to work are hurried into the first thing 
which can be found for them, regardless of whether it 
offers any training for the future, or whether they have 
pronounced capabilities for something else. Epileptics 
and mentally defective children are left without the 
special instruction and care they should have, because of 
the difficulty of securing such conditions. Everywhere 
and at all times there is a temptation to relieve the 
immediate need by the easiest way, regardless of the 
ultimate effects of such action. This is, perhaps, the 
commonest temptation of the charitable worker, but it is 
one which can be guarded against. A sense of propor- 
tion can be cultivated, long views can be taken, and any 
worker may learn to consider ultimate results. 

Seriousness of purpose, imaginative sympathy and a 
sense of proportion — these are the most important quali- 
ties for a worker among the poor. There are many 
other qualifications which are needed ; in fact, nothing 
which one possesses will come amiss, and there will be 
times when a temporary omniscience will seem abso- 
lutely indispensable. Courtesy, of course, is essential, 
and a sense of humor will help one through many a dis- 
couraging experience. A long list might be made of 



32 HOW TO HELP 

useful characteristics, but they may all be summed up in 
a few words. Common sense, kindly feeling and a will- 
ingness to learn — given these, no one need fear to enter 
the field with a confident expectation of rendering good 
service. 



CHAPTER V 

AGENCIES FOR PHILANTHROPIC WORK 

"Not to know the charities of one's own city is criminal." 

— Jenkins Lloyd Jones. 

In every city and town numerous agencies exist for 
dealing with different kinds of want, and some knowl- 
edge of them is almost indispensable for anybody who 
feels a sense of responsibility toward the poor. One 
may not wish to take up any form of philanthropic work, 
but nevertheless appeals for help will be made to one, 
and common humanity demands that the applicant 
should be directed to the place where his needs may be 
met. Trouble and want appear among one's own 
employees, past or present. Women come to the door 
with a tale of destitution, and homeless men stop one on 
the street or penetrate to the business office with their 
plea. We cannot guard ourselves against hearing the 
appeal for aid. Some few shut their ears and go on 
their way unheeding, and for these the charitable 
agencies of their community may well be a matter of 
indifference, but for all others they have a practical 
interest. No one can undertake to relieve single-handed 
the want which is sure to present itself. Whether we 
wish merely to pass on an applicant to some one 
capable of helping him, or to supervise ourselves the 
process of effectively relieving his wants, we need the 
aid of a wide circle of associated forces. Societies and 
organizations cannot and should not take the place of 
3 33 



34 



HOW TO HELP 



the individual, but they can increase many fold the 
effectiveness of his efforts. 

As a rule it is not difficult to obtain the slight knowl- 
edge of the organized forces of helpfulness which is 
needed by the average person. Nearly all of the larger 
cities and towns have a charity organization society or 
some similar body. Many of these publish directories 
of the philanthropic agencies of their particular com- 
munities, but even when they fail to do this they are 
sure to have on file reports of all the local societies. The 
agents in charge are naturally familiar with these dif- 
ferent bodies, and can easily give an enquirer some 
account of the principal societies, what particular need 
each expects to meet, what are their different methods 
of work, who should be applied to in each, under what 
conditions they will give help, with innumerable other 
details. In places where there is no central organiza- 
tion, the different relief societies can usually be found 
listed in the directory. Naturally, little more is given 
here than the name of a society, its purpose and its 
president, or secretary, but these facts at least enable one 
to know whether or not any organization exists for the 
relief of a given kind of need, and, if it does, to whom 
one should apply to secure its assistance. Moreover, by 
going to the officers of one or two of these societies, who 
are apt to be experienced workers in the philanthropic 
field, one can usually obtain much information as to the 
charitable resources of the place. 

It may be easier to gain a working knowledge of the 
relief agencies of a given community by remembering 
that the whole bewildering array of societies, circles, 
relief agencies and beneficent associations falls naturally 
into three fairly well defined groups — public agencies, 



AGENCIES FOR PHILANTHROPIC WORK 35 

general private associations and special private associa- 
tions. The range and importance of each of these groups 
differ from place to place, but there is hardly a com- 
munity so small that all three will not be found, all work- 
ing toward the same end, and supplying, more or less 
effectively, one another's deficiencies. It may be worth 
while to dwell upon these different groups at some 
length. 

Underlying the whole complex manifestation of 
philanthropic activity is the system of public relief. The 
community as a whole is not willing that any of its mem- 
bers should absolutely perish of hunger or cold or lack 
of medical care, so it undertakes to supply the needs of 
those who are utterly helpless and friendless, or whose 
friends are too little better off than themselves to be able 
to give aid. For this reason the community maintains 
almshouses, where the old, the infirm and the crippled 
may be sheltered; it supports hospitals, wherein the ill 
and the injured may receive treatment, and it has some 
system of providing for destitute children, either by 
boarding them out in private families, by caring for them 
in some form of orphanage or home, or, in the smaller 
and more backward communities, by placing them in 
the almshouse. The insane and the feeble-minded are 
also cared for, either in special hospitals, or, in localities 
where intelligent philanthropy has made little progress, 
in the general almshouse. 

Such aid, known as indoor relief, can be secured for 
the absolutely helpless in every community, but with 
regard to outdoor relief, or help given to an applicant 
in his own home, the custom varies from city to city. In 
some of the larger places the ground has been taken 
that public relief should never be given except in indoor 



36 HOW TO HELP 

form; that so long as an applicant can do anything for 
himself, or his friends can give help, it is better to refuse 
him public assistance, leaving private charity to piece 
out his insufficiencies. In behalf of this position it is 
argued that many people who would exert themselves to 
the utmost rather than go into an institution, would be 
only too glad to relax their efforts at self-support if they 
could receive help in their own homes. Moreover the 
public relief authorities must deal with large numbers 
of applicants, with whom their relation is purely official 
and formal. Consequently it is not possible for them to 
become so well acquainted with the circumstances of the 
individual case as can the agents of private societies, who 
will give more time to make sure of the real situation, 
and can bring more of the personal element into their 
dealings. Hence the public authorities are more easily 
imposed upon, and this possibility of successful imposi- 
tion tends to provoke unwarranted applications. This 
tendency is increased by the fact that many people are 
inclined to look upon public help as a right and to apply 
for it without hesitation, while they would regard them- 
selves as losing caste if they appealed for private aid. 
Wherever a close investigation has been made into the 
circumstances of those receiving public outdoor relief, 
numerous instances of imposition have been found, and 
in many cases there is no doubt that such relief has 
wrought serious harm, tending directly to produce 
pauperism in the recipient and putting a premium on 
fraud and beggary. Also, wherever such help is given 
there is a constant possibility of its being made use of as 
political capital. Those charged with disbursing such 
help are usually elective officers and the possibilities of 
serious abuses along this line are obvious. For these 



AGENCIES FOR PHILANTHROPIC WORK 37 

reasons public outdoor relief has been abolished in some 
of the principal cities of the country, notably in Brooklyn 
and in Philadelphia. Not only did this action cause no 
perceptible increase in suffering, but in some cases it was 
followed by an actual diminution in the number of 
appeals made to private societies. 

On the other hand, advocates of public outdoor relief 
point out that in many cases some help given in the 
home will enable a family to keep together, and, while 
securing to them the advantages of a normal as opposed 
to an institutional life, renders it possible to make use of 
whatever earning capacity they may have, and thus 
diminishes the cost to the community of helping them 
adequately. For example, an old couple, unable to make 
a sufficient living, may yet make something, which, with 
the addition of a little help from the community, will 
enable them to live outside of the almshouse. A widow 
with young children may be able to make nearly the 
amount needed to keep her little ones with her, and if 
she receives public help in her own home the community 
is saved the difference betwen what it gives and the 
entire cost of supporting one or several of the children, 
A family may be brought to want by the illness or injury 
of a breadwinner, so that they are temporarily unable 
to maintain themselves, yet they may be entirely capable 
under ordinary circumstances of self-support. If helped 
over the temporary need they will again take their 
normal position, whereas, if outdoor help cannot be 
secured, the family may be broken up, and serious suf- 
fering and injury ensue. 

The opponents of outdoor relief would entirely agree 
with its advocates in thinking these fit cases for relief 
in their homes, but they maintain that this aid should 



38 HOW TO HELP 

come from private societies or individuals. To this 
argument the advocates reply that private charity can- 
not or will not take care of them all, that the sufferer 
does not know how to reach private relief agencies, 
whereas the public officials are known to all, and that 
for these and other reasons it is well for the community 
to give help in the home. The question is still under 
debate, and the custom varies from place to place, so 
that in each city and town it is necessary to learn by 
enquiry whether or not public relief is given in the home, 
and if so, under what conditions and to what extent. 

In most of the New England communities there is a 
rather puzzling division of responsibility between the 
town and the state. If the applicant for relief has a 
"settlement," that is, if he has fulfilled certain conditions 
as to length of residence, or possession of property, or 
practice of a trade, or payment of taxes, the town in 
which he has fulfilled these conditions is liable for his 
care; if he has not, and if he does not possess a settle- 
ment elsewhere the state must bear the expenses of his 
relief. The principle underlying this arrangement, that 
each community should be responsible for its own poor, 
is thoroughly sound. But in practice some places have 
made their conditions so onerous that the ordinary mem- 
ber of the laboring classes is never likely to gain a settle- 
ment. The matter is of great importance to the public 
official and to the professional charity worker, but the 
conditions of settlement are so varied and in many 
places so complicated, that the non-professional worker 
will find it better to seek advice on each case as it rises, 
rather than to attempt familiarizing himself with the 
whole subject. 

Next to the public relief agencies come the large 



AGENCIES FOR PHILANTHROPIC WORK 



39 



private societies, which might almost be called quasi- 
public, so extended is their work. Some of these are 
designed to reach one particular class of the poor, like 
the St. Vincent de Paul Society, which, while not refus- 
ing to help others, is mainly concerned with the care of 
the Roman Catholic poor, or like the Hebrew benevolent 
societies, organized for the special purpose of relieving 
suffering among those of their own race. Usually in 
addition to such, there is at least one large society in 
each city which expects to give help without regard to 
color, race or creed. These large societies are the chief 
instruments, as a rule, through which the individual 
may work, and their methods, and the means of secur- 
ing their assistance, should be carefully kept in mind. 
Generally one or more of them will have districted the 
city and will have in each district an agent, to whom 
application must be made for any help needed from the 
society in that section. Sometimes there will be found 
in a city several of these extended societies, one having 
been organized to give help in illness, another to supply 
coal in winter, or to provide food or clothing, or to fulfil 
some other definitely limited purpose. 

After these more general societies comes the third 
class, the innumerable small groups and organizations, 
sometimes connected with churches, sometimes inde- 
pendent, which exist for the purpose of doing philan- 
thropic work. In a city of any size it is almost impos- 
sible to secure a complete list of these, but some knowl- 
edge of them may be obtained by consulting church year 
books, and by conferring with those who have been long 
engaged in relief work. The volunteer worker will find 
an acquaintance with them very useful. Their purposes 
are so varied that help of nearly every imaginable kind 



4Q 



HOW TO HELP 



may be secured through them. Some will give clothing, 
others shoes for school children, or delicacies for the 
sick, or secure outings for mothers and children, or, 
occasionally, pay rent, or provide babies' outfits, or help 
in a dozen other ways. 

As a general rule no one of these groups, nor indeed 
of the larger societies, is prepared to give the amount 
of help necessary in cases of severe destitution or of long 
continued distress. Consequently, under such circum- 
stances, it becomes necessary to call on several, apply- 
ing to each for its particular kind of help which, insuf- 
ficient in itself, combines with what is received from the 
Others to make up a sufficiency. Hence the desirability 
of securing as wide a knowledge as possible of the dif- 
ferent sources from which aid may be obtained, with the 
kind and amount furnished by each. 



CHAPTER VI 

ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES 

It seems tolerably obvious that it is impossible to 
help without a clear conception of the trouble for which 
help is needed, and of the kinds of help most likely to 
prove efficacious. Gaining this knowledge is technically 
called investigation — a word which, through a popular 
misunderstanding of its use, has fallen into disfavor with 
many. No one who is really interested in the poor is 
satisfied with relieving a mere immediate surface need, 
leaving all other aspects of the situation untouched. If 
one finds a family suffering for food, it is woefully insuf- 
ficient to send them a dinner, leaving them otherwise 
unaided. The dinner will relieve their present hunger, 
but to-morrow they will be hungry again. Any help 
worthy of the name must take into account the relief of 
immediate and the prevention of future suffering. But 
the means of preventing future suffering will depend on 
the character of the family under consideration, its his- 
tory, and its resources in the way of earning capacity, 
friends, and claims on public or private agencies of 
relief. 

For instance, it is evident that if a family has been 
reduced to temporary and acute want by the illness of 
the principal breadwinner, the kind and amount of help 
which should be given will differ greatly from what may 
be required if its earning capacity at the best of times 
is not equal to its needs, and its condition of want has 
been chronic for so long that vitality has been reduced 

4i 



42 HOW TO HELP 

and ambition and courage lost. Take so simple a matter 
as a case of severe illness in a poor family ; whether the 
patient should be sent to some hospital or sanitarium, or 
a nurse, medicines and nourishing food should be sent 
to the house, may depend entirely upon the character of 
the other members. A family in serious need may have 
a claim for relief upon some i ociety to which one member 
has belonged, or relatives of whom they have lost sight 
may prove able and willing to help if hunted up and 
acquainted with the situation, or a former employer or 
friend may be found who is willing to advance what is 
necessary. But these things, and many others bearing 
on the right treatment for a given case, can be learned 
only by careful and thorough investigation, a process 
which may be defined as acquiring full knowledge of 
the situation, ability and character of a person in want, 
for the double purpose of relieving that want effectively 
and preventing its recurrence. 

An investigation of this kind is a difficult enquiry to 
make, requiring tact, perseverance, good judgment and 
knowledge of human nature. The non-professional 
philanthropist will do well to avoid it altogether when 
possible. In any place where there is a charity organi- 
zation society, or any similar body, it is always possible 
by sending a request to it to have an investigation made 
by a trained worker, who will furnish a report giving 
the principal facts of importance to those desiring to 
help. Such a request does not involve any unpleasant 
publicity for the family under consideration, since all 
agents of this kind are under a professional obligation 
to respect the privacy of those with whom they deal, 
and to make known the results of investigation only to 
those who have a right to the knowledge. In communi- 



ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES 



43 



ties, nowever, where no charity organization society 
exists, and where no experienced worker is available, it 
may become necessary for the non-professional worker 
to attempt investigation, in which case it is well to 
observe a few general rules. 

In the first place, since the object is to help, great 
care should be taken that the family is not really injured 
by the methods adopted. Many seem to have acquired 
the idea that investigation means obtaining information 
of any kind by any methods, no matter how objection- 
able, and consequently they talk over a family's affairs 
and character with the neighbors, the landlord, or any- 
one else who seems to know them, regardless of the 
harm which may be done, both to the self-respect of the 
family and to their standing among their own class. 
Among the self-respecting poor the feeling against 
accepting aid is very strong, and if it must be done, the 
merest humanity demands that the humiliation of pub- 
licity should not be added to the mortification of receiv- 
ing assistance. Generally speaking, one should never 
apply to present neighbors, landlords or employers for 
information. If the family have any church connec- 
tions, it is usually safe to apply to their clergyman, who, 
it is fair to assume, will treat the matter with discretion. 
If they have a family doctor he also is likely both to 
know a good deal about them and to regard any discus- 
sion of their affairs as confidential. It is ordinarily quite 
safe to go to a former landlord, employer or neighbor. 
The testimony of neighbors, however, should always be 
taken cautiously; disagreements are frequent among 
tenants of the same house or the same yard, and it is an 
easy means of "getting even" to give a former antago- 
nist a bad character. Any information of an unfavorable 



44 



HOW TO HELP 



nature, especially, should be taken tentatively and not 
believed without confirmation. It should never be for- 
gotten that the purpose of an investigation is not to try 
to find out something bad about an applicant, but to 
learn his real character and situation as thoroughly as 
possible, in order that help, if needed, may be given as 
intelligently and effectively as possible. If the family 
are strangers in their present location, valuable results 
may often be obtained by writing to the charity organi- 
zation society of their former abode, giving name and 
former address, and asking for their record while there. 

After all, the principal sources of information must 
frequently be learned from the applicants themselves. It 
is entirely possible to say to them, either directly or in 
effect : "I see that you are having a hard time. I want 
to help you. But perhaps there is a better way out than 
you have thought of. You must let me ask you a great 
many questions, so that I may know all about the situa- 
tion, and then we will talk it over together and see what 
ought to be done." When this basis has once been 
established, it will be found that the applicants are likely 
to answer all enquiries with a curious frankness, some- 
times giving references who, when looked up, will con- 
tradict altogether the story told, and make known a very 
different state of affairs from that which the applicant 
wished to present. 

There will be cases in which this method will fail, and 
the investigator will be deceived and tricked, but this 
also happens occasionally to those who pride themselves 
upon their subtle methods. Friendliness and frankness 
in questioning the applicant, and careful, conscientious 
work in looking up the references given will usually 
accomplish the desired result, while the straightforward- 



ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES 45 

ness of the means employed is no small recommendation. 
An investigator is not a detective, and can hardly be 
expected to adopt the methods of one. 

Having thus acquired a working knowledge of the 
circumstances, character and record of the family one 
wishes to help, the next step is to form some plan for 
their permanent relief. It can not be too often repeated 
that incidental and haphazard help, given or withheld on 
the impulse of the moment, is both cruel and harmful. 
Cruel, because when so given or refused, there is no cer- 
tainty that it will bear any relation to the intensity of 
the applicant's need. The refusal may come at a time 
when the want is more severe than at a previous time 
when aid was given freely; and this previous giving 
may have taught the applicant to rely upon similar help 
this time. Harmful, because it trains him to take the 
gambler's attitude toward life. If he knows that under 
given conditions he will receive a given amount of aid, 
he can make his plans accordingly, and the relief falls 
into place merely as one of the resources on which he 
may rely. But if an applicant for help may today meet 
with a bountiful response and next week be refused 
altogether, it is impossible for him to form and follow 
out any consistent plan. One of the commonest com- 
plaints made against the poor is that they are short- 
sighted and improvident, that they will not look ahead, 
but live up to the limit of their income, spending 
thoughtlessly when they have and then asking help for 
the hard times against which they ought to have pro- 
vided. It is difficult to imagine anything better fitted to 
encourage this habit of mind than unsystematized giv- 
ing. If the result of an appeal for aid may vary from 
what seems to the applicant a liberal provision to 



46 HOW TO HELP 

nothing at all, the natural tendency is to anticipate the 
large return, and to make no preparation for the need 
which this, if secured, will relieve. Unnecessarily liberal 
giving cannot work a tithe of the harm done by irregular 
giving. 

Another objection to giving without a definite plan is 
found in the impossibility of treating any case of want 
constructively without such a plan. If an applicant is 
in a situation which makes outside help imperative, it is 
pretty certain that he did not reach it suddenly and that 
he will not emerge from it immediately. There is some 
weakness or incapacity, some misfortune or lack of 
adaptation to his environment which is likely to produce 
this effect again, and to help him truly, aid should be 
given in such a way as to remove or overcome this, and 
should be continued until the danger of relapsing into 
want is over. There are families in which the earning 
capacity is really inadequate to their proper support, and 
who should have help extending perhaps over a period of 
years. An instance is the common case of a widow left 
with young children. If she devotes her whole time to 
earning their living she cannot give the children the care 
they need, and even neglecting them as she must, she is 
too often unable to make enough to maintain her own 
physical efficiency and give the children a chance to 
become well developed men and women. Too frequently 
in such cases help is given intermittently and without 
any far-sighted plan. The woman is encouraged to take 
all the work she can possibly get, and as soon as she is 
self-supporting she is left to her own devices. Then, 
from time to time, when she is ill or work is slack or 
some other difficulty arises, she must again ask for help. 
Generally each time she does this a new investigation is 



ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES 47 

made, and more or less insufficient and spasmodic aid is 
given her, As a result, she herself is apt to be worn out 
prematurely, the children are likely to suffer from insuf- 
ficient nourishment, the help received is inadequate to 
the real needs of her position, and yet the family are 
forced through the painful process of applying for aid 
so often that if their self-respect is not permanently 
injured it must be of uncommonly strong fibre. Natur- 
ally there are many cases of want which do not require 
a plan extending over so long a period as in this instance, 
but there should always be some well defined end to 
be attained and some clearly understood means of attain- 
ing it, in accordance with which help is given or with- 
held. 

In forming such a plan it is apparent that not only the 
situation of the sufferers must be taken into considera- 
tion, but also their characters and antecedents. A thrifty, 
industrious New England family who through some mis- 
fortune have fallen into temporary want would call for 
a very different plan of treatment from that needed for 
some of the thoroughly pauperized, shiftless and lazy 
families, of whom a few are usually to be found in every 
community. In a small place this difference is made 
almost as a matter of course, because those in want are 
sufficiently well known to those who give aid, for their s 
character to be taken rather unconsciously as a determin- 
ing factor in any discussion of what should be done. In 
a larger place, where applicants are usually strangers, 
there is a certain tendency on the part of givers of relief 
to class them all together as "the poor," and to treat 
them in accordance with fixed general rules. It must 
be remembered that the poor of our large cities are not 
homogeneous; they spring from different races, they 



48 HOW TO HELP 

have different aptitudes, different standards of living, 
different ambitions and ideals. A motive which stirs one 
to the strongest exertion leaves another indifferent. It 
is useless to treat them as if they must all want the same 
thing and try to reach it by the same road. Effort which 
does not take account of their diversities is to a large 
degree wasted. 

This difference runs from the most trivial to highly 
important matters. To take the mere question of giving 
food, it should be apparent that it is unwise and waste- 
ful to send to an orthodox Jewish family the provisions 
which would be most welcome to an English or Irish 
applicant, yet certain societies have been known to persist 
in this course. "We can't make any differences," they 
say. "We send them good food and if they won't eat it 
that is their loss." So the unlucky Hebrew is con- 
fronted with the alternative of eating what to him is 
unclean food or going hungry, and as he usually chooses 
the latter course, the provisions might better not be sent 
at all. 

When it comes to the more serious matters, such as 
trying to surround a boy or girl with helpful influences, 
or deciding whether an applicant is in need of severity 
or kindly encouragement, or, an easier matter, trying to 
find work adapted to his needs, the question of his racial 
and individual peculiarities becomes more important. 
One cannot deal successfully with the poor in wholesale 
fashion; the method which works admirably in one 
instance may fail miserably in the next. A careful study 
of each case in the light of all the knowledge acquired 
by previous experience and by such general information 
as one can gain, is the only way of acting intelligently 
and with any chance of success. If one is likely to deal 



ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES 49 

with people of any particular nationality some time 
ought to be given to a study of their racial character- 
istics, which can be gathered from books of travel and 
from history, if the opportunity does not present itself 
for a first hand study. Whatever aids one to under- 
stand an applicant's outlook on life qualifies one to deal 
with him more helpfully. 

A little knowledge of the social ideals of a given class 
or a certain locality is also useful. One of the com- 
monest complaints against the poor is that they are reck- 
lessly extravagant in the matter of funerals. It is 
assuredly trying to see a family put into burial expenses 
money which is so urgently needed for the living, but no 
good is done by deciding offhand that they are extrava- 
gant and wasteful, and lecturing them accordingly. They 
have their social standards, even more exacting than 
those of the well-to-do, and one of the most basic of 
these is respect for the dead, as exemplified in a fine 
funeral. One who refuses this tribute to his dead, 
offends almost unpardonably against their social code. 
It is a commonplace that most of us would rather com- 
mit a sin than a solecism, and the feeling is even 
stronger among the poor, where life is lived more in 
public than is the case among the better off, and where 
the bad opinion of one's neighbors is a serious thing to 
face. Of course, it is not meant that the philanthropic 
worker should encourage this form of spending; but 
there is a better chance of modifying it if allowance is 
made for the real feeling, not only of affection but of 
obligation toward the dead, which underlies it and the 
heavy social penalties which follow its non-observance, 
than if it is looked upon merely as a foolish and wicked 
waste of money to be condemned without reserve. 
4 



50 HOW TO HELP 

"The first real success I made sprang from helping 
in funeral extravagance," said one professional worker, 
during an interchange of confidences. "It was the 
beginning of my work, so I acted on impulse, but I 
might do the same thing designedly now. A child had 
died away from home in a hospital to which I had sent 
it, and I had to break the news to the family, and arrange 
for the return of the body. The parents were a drink- 
ing couple, and they were all shiftless and inconsequent, 
but I never saw more family affection than they all had. 
The day the little coffin arrived their grief was pitiful. 
They were, planning to go in debt for much more of a 
funeral than they could afford, but as their credit was 
scanty, it was poor enough at that. They were so utterly 
miserable that I couldn't stand it; I felt I simply must 
do something, so I went off to a florist and got a lot of 
white flowers and ferns, and gave them to the eldest 
daughter, who was nearly blind from crying. I've never 
forgotten how her face changed, nor the tone in which 
she cried, 'Oh, mother, now Jimmie can have some 
flowers, after all.' I had worked hard before to help 
that family and make them look on me as a friend, but 
all I had done was a trifle compared with that little 
impulsive act. From then on they trusted me entirely, 
and really set themselves to working with me until, while 
they never became models, they did get fairly started 
uphill, and they are still going that way." 

Another point on which a difference of ideals is likely 
to appear is the whole question of trades unionism, par- 
ticularly with regard to taking the place of workers out 
on strike. Whatever our own ideas as to trades 
unionism may be, it is unwise to press any poor person 
to take work where a strike is in progress. The strike 



ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES 



51 



breaker may be a hero or he may be a sneak, and among 
working classes he is generally looked upon as the lat- 
ter. The self-respecting working man or woman will be 
very apt to prefer suffering to obtaining work under 
such conditions, and the philanthropist will only injure 
his own reputation among them by urging this action. 
It is only fair, too, to realize that underlying this refusal 
is a generous and commendable spirit, and that though 
its manifestation is sometimes unfortunate, the principle 
on which it is grounded, the sense of brotherhood and 
the unwillingness to profit at the cost of another, should 
be recognized and encouraged. 

Other instances might be given, but these are suffi- 
ciently illustrative. No one wholly comprehends 
another, but the more nearly we can understand the life, 
the inherited attitudes, and the social and individual 
peculiarities of an applicant, the better our chance of 
forming a plan of action which shall eventually be help- 
ful in the highest sense. 

In forming any plan of relief care should be taken 
that it is adequate to the needs of the situation. It will 
often happen that the would-be helper will be quite 
unable to obtain the amount of assistance needed for 
satisfactory treatment of a case, but it is well, at leasts 
to think out what would be the right thing to do if help 
were readily obtainable, and then to approximate this, 
course of action as nearly as possible. 

There is a curious idea among many that scientific- 
giving means penurious giving, and that it is somehow- 
far better for an applicant's character that help should 
be doled out in the smallest amounts which will keep him 
from utter destitution. This attitude leads sometimes to 
surprised reproaches against professional workers. 



52 HOW TO HELP 

"Aren't you afraid you will pauperize them if you give 
so much ?" is asked in all good faith by those who have 
caught the phraseology without the spirit of the new 
philanthropy. Such a question shows' an utter failure to 
appreciate the true meaning of pauperization. An appli- 
cant may be pauperized by being helped irregularly and 
inconsistently, by being given aid at one time and 
refused it at another, by being trained to think that if 
he allows himself to get into sufficiently impressive 
destitution relief will surely be forthcoming, by receiving 
such insufficient help that he is obliged to ask in many 
quarters until he loses the self-respect which makes him 
shrink from seeking aid, by having relief given him 
without reference to his own ability to help himself, in 
short, by all the different forms of careless or indis- 
criminate giving; but it is highly doubtful whether any- 
one could be pauperized by help, however liberal, given 
in accordance with a definite and well considered plan, 
looking toward the restoration of the applicant to com- 
plete self-support, or such partial self-support as he may 
be capable of attaining. 

This point can hardly be too strongly emphasized. 
"Inadequate help is torture and temptation." Torture 
because it leaves the applicant in prolonged suffering. 
Temptation, because it surely drives him to apply to 
others, from whom he is more likely to receive aid if 
he conceals the fact that he is already being partially 
helped. Both torture and temptation because it leaves 
him in a state of want which inevitably tends to lower 
his vitality and weaken his will and diminish his power 
of resistance to the incitements to intemperance and dis- 
honesty. It may be impossible to give adequately, but 
at least such a course may be attempted, and the dis- 



ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES 53 

crepancy between what is needed and what is given 
made as small as possible. If the discrepancy must exist, 
let us recognize it for what it is, a misfortune for which 
our insufficient sources of help are responsible, and not 
try to blind ourselves by talking about the dangers of 
pauperization. 

It may be thought we have already laid out a suffi- 
ciently wide field to be covered in forming our projected 
plan of relief, but there is still another aspect of the 
situation to be taken into account. No satisfactory plan 
can be formed without a careful consideration of the 
resources already existing within the family and within 
the circle of their immediate connections. Generally 
speaking every family has within itself some capacity for 
self-support. Some member or members are working or 
are able to work. It may be that they are unemployed 
but that work can be found for them, or that with a 
little trouble better paying work can be secured for them 
than they have found for themselves. If their earnings 
cannot be made sufficient, it may be that there are chil- 
dren away from home, or other relatives who, while not 
legally obliged to aid, will contribute to the family 
income if they are asked to do so. Wherever help can 
be secured in this way there is a double advantage. It 
relieves the charitable agencies of a charge which ought 
only to be incurred for those who cannot be otherwise 
helped, and still more important, it tends to strengthen 
the family ties which the conditions of modern life are 
doing much to weaken. Even if unable to supply 
material relief, relatives can often give valuable advice 
as to a desirable course of treatment, and consulting 
them increases their sense of responsibility. Generally 
speaking, every effort should be made to utilize to its 



54 



HOW TO HELP 



fullest the earning capacity of the immediate family 
"before any appeal is made to distant relatives or to out- 
siders. 

If the family is entirely unable to meet its own needs, 
even with the fullest utilization of its resources, the 
most natural source of aid is from those with whom it 
has established connections, its neighbors, its church, 
former employers or friends. The help which can be 
secured from neighbors varies in degree, but it is more 
likely to be in the form of friendly services than of direct 
relief. They may help to nurse the sick, or may relieve 
an overworked mother by taking care of the children, 
or sew for a woman whose time is too full to let her do 
it for herself, or help in countless ways a young girl left 
to be housekeeper and home maker for a brood of 
younger children, but they cannot often give continuous 
help in food or money. It is rather unwise to ask this, 
as it at once places the recipient on a footing of 
inequality which is never done by the acceptance of 
friendly services which may be returned in kind. 

This objection hardly applies to the church, from 
which direct assistance may often be obtained, and an 
appeal should be made for its cooperation. If, however, 
the need is great, or is likely to be long continued, the 
church may not be able to undertake its relief single- 
handed. Then it becomes a question whether there are 
any local societies to make up the deficiencies. It may 
be taken as a general principle that the more closely 
related the source of relief is to the person or group in 
need, the better, and such related sources should always 
be tried before help is asked from strangers. 

Any plan for relief, then, should be based on a knowl- 
edge of the real condition and real needs of the appli- 



ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES 



55 



cant. It should take into account not only the relief of 
immediate want, but the prevention of future need, and 
the restoration of the family or individual to complete 
self-support, or, if this is not possible, to such measure of 
self-support as may be practicable. In planning for 
these latter purposes, all the resources of the family 
should be taken into account, and its peculiarities, 
whether racial or individual, duly considered and 
allowed for. If material aid is necessary it should be 
adequate in amount and obtained, as far as possible, 
from those on whom the family has some natural claim. 
More important usually than the material help is the 
careful planning to develop every resource within the 
family and make the most of every capacity. Above all, 
any plan, to be genuinely helpful, must be far-sighted 
and thorough, and must be consistently and patiently 
followed out. 



PART II.— Application of Principles to 
Definite Cases 

CHAPTER VII 

THE HOMELESS MAN 

"I hold not so narrow a conceit of this virtue as to conceive 
that to give Alms is onely to be Charitable, or think a piece of 
Liberality can comprehend the Total of Charity. . . . There are 
infirmities not onely of Body, but of Soul, and Fortunes, which 
do require the merciful hand of our abilities." — Religio Medici. 

The homeless man is the applicant with whom the 
average citizen most frequently comes in contact, and 
for whose existence, to a large degree, his own well meant 
but unwise benevolence is responsible. The pervasive- 
ness of this type of applicant is doubly unfortunate, 
since he presents one of the most difficult problems of 
modern philanthropy, and it is almost impossible to deal 
with him helpfully except through a highly developed 
organization of charitable forces. The individual, striv- 
ing single-handed to help him, can do little but harm, 
yet it is to the individual that he makes his plea, and it 
is the individual who, not recognizing the gravity of the 
situation, furnishes him the means of becoming more and 
more hopelessly a social wreck. 

One side of our duty with regard to tramps has been 
laid before us with considerable fullness of late years. 
We have heard much of what we ought not to do, and 
have been warned of the perils of giving to them until 
we have no excuse for not at least knowing that such 
giving is looked upon with disfavor by those versed in 

56 



THE HOMELESS MAN 57 

charitable work. Unfortunately, not so much has been 
said about what ought to be done, and many find them- 
selves either giving with a sense of guilty weakness 
or refusing with a sense of extreme hard-heartedness. 
Without question the charitable experts are right in 
discouraging the giving of money in response to such 
appeals, but their reasons have not attained the same 
wide currency as their injunctions. In order, then, both 
to understand why it is unwise to give money, and what 
else and how we should give, let us consider for a 
moment the different classes which go to make up the 
huge army of the homeless. We may, for the present, 
leave the wandering woman out of the discussion, as 
she, happily, is of much rarer occurrence than her 
nomadic brother. 

Homeless men may be roughly divided into four 
classes. First we have the laboring man who is honestly 
out of work and honestly trying to find it. Then the 
tramp proper, who, while often nominally looking for 
work, does so with much caution, who lives by beggary 
and petty theft, who is frequently below par physically 
or mentally, and who is so wedded to the tramping life 
as to make it practically certain that he will never leave 
it unless he is forced out. Next is the yeggman, or 
tramp of criminal propensities, who makes hisT:ramp life 
an opportunity of gaining information which will be 
useful to him in the offences, generally either of burg- 
lary or robbery, which he contemplates, and who also 
finds in it a means of hiding from justice, and of eking 
out his living in the intervals of crime. And finally we 
have the tramping impostor, ranging from the man who 
does up his arm in splints and bandages, or simulates 
blindness or some other disability, to the well dressed 



58 HOW TO HELP 

and gentlemanly victim of circumstances who has a 
plausible tale to account for the fact of his temporarily- 
impecunious condition at a time when work or friends are 
awaiting him at some other place to which he hasn't got 
the fare. It is a question whether this last individual 
ought to be classed here, or with the professional beg- 
ging letter writers and confidence men, but as he usually 
makes his appeal on the ground that he is without food 
or shelter and away from home, perhaps he may be 
properly grouped with the homeless man. 

This does not pretend to be an exhaustive analysis. 
Innumerable subdivisions might be made within each 
class, and individuals are continually passing from one 
group to another. Moreover, temporarily allied with any 
of the groups, or vacillating between them, may be 
found those who are most of all in need of wise help — 
boys or young men who through fault, thoughtlessness 
or misfortune, find themselves adrift, who are attracted 
by the ease of entering upon a tramp's life, or by the 
adventure and variety the career offers, and whose whole 
future course may easily be affected by the results of 
their first appeals to strangers. These seem to be grow- 
ing more numerous of late years. The detectives of the 
Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Road estimate that 
seventy-five per cent, of the tramps found riding on its 
trains are boys under twenty, "riding round just to have 
a look at the country." These tramps in embryo are so 
intermixed with the older wanderers that they have not 
received the attention they deserve, and we know but 
little of their numbers, the causes which lead them into 
the life, and the best methods of restraining or reclaim- 
ing them. Their existence should always be kept in 
mind as one of the strongest reasons against indulging 



THE HOMELESS MAN 59 

in the careless giving which makes easy their descent to 
trampdom. These several groups of homeless wanderers 
require a little detailed consideration before we are in a 
position to see what is the really helpful treatment which 
should be accorded them. 

y The working man really seeking work certainly does 
exist, though he is usually much in the minority. Every 
industrial disturbance is sure to send forth a number 
looking for the work which has failed them at home. 
During the strike in the cotton industry in Fall River 
which lasted through the summer and autumn of 1904, 
every cotton manufacturing city for a surprising distance 
around received almost daily groups of men seeking 
employment as weavers or spinners or in some other 
form of more or less skilled industry. The hard times of 
i907-'8 caused a very perceptible increase in the num- 
ber of wanderers. In the summer of 1908 Charities and 
The Commons collected from railroads throughout the 
United States their latest reports on railroad vagrancy. 
From every direction came reports of an increase in the 
number of vagrants : 

"Most railroads report a very noticeable increase in 
vagrancy on their lines. They ascribe the increased 
number of vagrants to hard times, resulting in a reduc- 
tion in the number of men employed throughout the 
country. 

"The report is frequent that more honest 'out-of- 
works' are stealing rides and trespassing. President 
McCrea of the Pennsylvania reports that 'not many of 
the illegal train riders are vagrants, but men out of 
employment/ The Southern Pacific reports that 'the 
type of trespasser is as a whole better.' "* 

1 Charities and The Commons, January 2$, 1909, "Concerning 
Vagrancy." 



60 HOW TO HELP 

Even when there is no disturbance and in times of 
comparative industrial prosperity, there are large num- 
bers who, being of inferior ability or poor physique, hold 
their work only by virtue of a pressing need for 
employees during a rush season, and who are thrown 
out of employment as soon as the pressure relaxes in 
the slightest degree. "The position of these workmen," 
says Rowntree, "is one of peculiar hopelessness. Their 
unfitness means low wages, low wages mean insufficient 
food, insufficient food means unfitness for labor, so that 
the vicious circle is complete." Sometimes such men 
stay on in their home city, trying, by turning from one 
industry to another, to secure a sufficient number of 
rush periods to make out their living, but sometimes 
they take to the road in the hope of finding more con- 
tinuous employment elsewhere. 

Also, under the stress and strain of modern industrial 
conditions, men are cast aside as too old at an age when 
they should, be in their prime. It frequently happens that 
a man who is sufficiently skilful to be sure of steady 
employment during his best years finds himself at a 
pitifully early age relegated to the class of less desirable 
employees, who are taken on only when the need for 
help is great. It is hard for any man to believe that at 
forty-eight he is past good service, and as he finds his 
employment growing more and more intermittent in one 
place he is very likely to try his fortune elsewhere. 

Naturally men of all these kinds are in much danger 
of becoming tramps. Whatever provision they may 
have made for their time of search — and usually it is 
meagre — is soon exhausted, and they must live by what 
they can obtain. The plea to be allowed to work for 
something to eat or for the privilege of a night's lodging 



THE HOMELESS MAN 6l 

is made in all good faith at first, but there is a strong 
likelihood that it will become more and more per- 
functory until it is omitted altogether, and the applicant 
finds that he has lost his original sense of shame in beg- 
ging, and has gone far toward bridging the chasm 
which once separated him from the professional tramp. 
Turning from the unemployed workingman to the 
tramp proper, a short consideration shows that the latter 
has so many variations that it is impossible to classify 
him offhand. Sometimes he is lazy and vicious, some- 
times he is weak and inefficient, sometimes he is capable 
but erratic, sometimes he is a born nomad, attracted 
irresistibly by the adventure and variety of a life on the 
road. Caste exists within his ranks, and there are many 
grades between the "tomato-can hoboes," who are the 
lowest stratum of trampdom, and the tramp of reputa- 
tion and ability, who prides himself upon his skill in 
levying tribute upon the world at large. According to 
the investigator who preferred to be known as Josiah 
Flynt, who had lived as a vagrant among vagrants, these 
higher grade tramps have no objection to work in itself, 
only it must be of the particular kind approved by their 
standards. Thus a self-respecting wanderer will beg 
for two hours or more, if necessary, to obtain the exact 
kind of dinner on which he has set his fancy, but would 
consider himself disgraced if he should pay for the din- 
ner by doing the odd jobs which are usually offered as 
quid pro quo. The distinguishing feature of the whole 
genus is their determination to live as well as they can 
at the expense of society. Some will on occasion under- 
take a little work, but this is looked upon as a weak- 
ness. Generally speaking, they have found that they 
can make as good a living as they care for by begging, 



62 HOW TO HELP 

and they see no reason for getting by work what they 
can get without it, with a spice of adventure and variety 
thrown in. 

There is no way in which the yeggman, or criminal 
tramp, can be distinguished from his less dangerous 
brother by the casual observer. As a tramp he can pass 
from city to city unobserved, can throw off pursuit more 
easily than in any other way, and has an unequalled 
opportunity for gathering, without arousing suspicion, 
the information he needs. J. N. Tillard, Chief of Police 
of Altoona, describes the manner in which these crim- 
inals utilize the advantages of a tramp's life : 

"I was initiated into the mysteries of yegg makeup 
methods when I saw a roommate in a Bowery lodging 
house remove from a normal hand what appeared to 
be the stump of an amputated wrist. It was made of 
muslin and paper, and admirably served the purpose for 
which it was intended, for several months later I saw 
the same gentleman industriously displaying his hand- 
less arm, and selling small cakes cut from bars of cheap 
laundry soap, for anywhere from five cents to a quarter 
as the crippled arm happened to move the sympathy of 
the guileless purchaser. A day or two after, I saw him 
seated on a tie-pile in friendly converse with a bunch 
of yeggs, one of whom I knew to be a 'peterman,' or 
safe-blower. As a matter of fact, these men were then 
planning the robbery of a small bank in a suburban 
town. They had rented an old house near the place, and 
furnished it with a second-hand cook stove, cooking uten- 
sils, dishes and bunks, and were biding their time till a 
large deposit for payment of railroad employees should be 
made. They were regarded by the people of the com- 
munity as a harmless lot of vagrants and maintained 
themselves for several months by selling soap, shoe- 
strings, pencils and by begging pure and simple. They 
were only partially successful in their attack upon the 



THE HOMELESS MAN 63 

bank, but got safely away, the local authorities never 
having suspected their character. . . . 

"My experience has taught me that a large majority of 
the travelling beggars that swarm over the country only 
beg as a means to an end. They have reduced the busi- 
ness to a fine art. By appearing in the guise of genuine 
subjects of charity they 'keep the cover' necessary to 
plan a successful robbery, and secure the means of sub- 
sistence while their plans are being perfected." 1 

The horrible crimes of violence sometimes committed 
by tramps in lonely places are probably due in the main 
to this class. The yeggman is a thoroughly dangerous 
member of society, and public safety demands such a 
treatment of tramps as will make it possible to detect 
him and bring repressive measures to bear upon him. 

The tramping impostor is of varying degrees of skill. 
Almost any kind of tramp may at times take up this 
role. Thus, after the great fire at Jacksonville a few 
years ago, the country was flooded with alleged suf- 
ferers, who having, according to their stories, lost every- 
thing there, were now trying to get to friends, who were 
scattered liberally throughout the Union, always at some 
distance from where the applicant happened to be. After 
the Spanish war for a time every tramp who was young 
and strong enough in appearance to give color to his 
story had, it seemed, been one of Roosevelt's Rough 
Riders, while the solitary survivor of the disaster at 
Martinique is said to have turned up, in destitution, in 
an astonishing number and variety of places. 

Ordinarily, however, the tramp does not undertake 
these higher flights of fancy, contenting himself with 
very humble fictions. Perhaps the commonest form of 
all is the assertion that the applicant has work promised 

1 Charities and The Commons, Sept. 28, 1907. 



64 HOW TO HELP 

for to-morrow or the next day, but has no means of 
getting through the intervening time. Another common 
form possibly owes its popularity to the fact that many 
members of this class are men who once held fairly good 
positions which they have lost through drink or dis- 
honesty. Usually a man who goes through this experi- 
ence wakes up to the fact that people really do not like 
to see anyone go down hill, and are glad to help if he 
shows a disposition to do better. Consequently, he pre- 
sents himself in a somewhat shamefaced fashion, admits 
that he has "been on a tear," which has left him penni- 
less, but claims that he can surely get his work back 
again if he can get to the town from which he started, 
or if he can get his tools out of pawn, or accomplish 
some other feat, which requires a little ready money. 
He has had his lesson, he says, and is going to keep 
straight now, but he can't make a start without this little 
amount of help. Such a story, to which the man's 
appearance gives an air of probability, appeals to many 
who would dismiss without attention a tale of lack of 
work or other undeserved hardship, and if it is at all 
skilfully told, is apt to bring in a good harvest. 

It is a short step from stories like these to the 
elaborate attempts of the professional impostor, and the 
line between the two classes is hard to draw. For the 
purposes of this consideration, however, we may draw it 
arbitrarily, classing as professionals those who penetrate 
to house or office with their tale, and confining our- 
selves at present to the beggar who accosts one on the 
street with a plea for help. 

When such an appeal is made, what should be the 
attitude of the kindly disposed citizen — the man or 
woman who is not a professional philanthropist, but who 



THE HOMELESS MAN 65 

feels some responsibility for the welfare of his fellows? 
It is apparent that the treatment required differs accord- 
ing to the past history of the applicant. He may be a 
boy who is just sinking into the ranks of trampdom, and 
whom every gift of money or food encourages in his 
downward course. He may be an honest man looking 
desperately for something to do. He may be a dangerous 
criminal or a confirmed impostor. In any case he rep- 
resents a life which is either wrecked and wasted or in 
imminent danger of becoming so, and to give merely an 
alms with any idea of being really beneficent is as wise 
as to attempt to cure a consumptive by administering a 
cough lozenge. 

The busy man or woman has neither the time nor the 
resources to deal helpfully with the vagrant. "The tramp 
is a specialist, and his treatment should be left to 
specialists." Nevertheless, this does not absolve the 
recipient of such an appeal from all duty toward the one 
who makes it. He is apt to do one of two things, either 
to bestow a small gift upon the applicant, or to refuse 
in toto. In the first case, he gives for the sake of secur- 
ing his own peace of mind, but he should recognize that 
he secures this at the risk of injuring the beggar, of 
encouraging him to continue in a course from which he 
might be saved by more considerate treatment, and of 
increasing, so far as his action has any effect, the burden 
which the tramp problem inevitably casts upon the com- 
munity at large. In the second case, he turns a deaf ear 
to an appeal which, while probably false in its terms, 
does indicate a most real and pressing need, and evades 
his part of the community burden which justice and 
humanity alike call upon him to assume. 

For there is a third course open to him — a more 
5 



66 HOW TO HELP 

troublesome and less attractive course than either of the 
others, which nevertheless does not involve any great 
expenditure of either time or money, and which, if at all 
generally followed out, would reduce the tramp problem 
to a minimum. For the average citizen it consists merely 
in finding out what are the resources of his community 
for dealing with wanderers, learning how they may be 
called into play, and then making use of them whenever 
a homeless man applies to him. 

Every community of any size makes some provision 
for the care of wanderers. The nearest to an ideal 
treatment yet devised is to have some place of detention 
to which all homeless men may be sent, in which work 
under healthful conditions will be furnished them, with 
sufficient food and satisfactory lodging, while their story 
is looked up and a sifting process carried on. The sub- 
sequent treatment should be varied according to circum- 
stances. For those who are really in search of work, 
employment may frequently be obtained, or if this is 
impossible, they should be returned to their homes, 
where they may have relatives able to help, and where, 
at least, they have the claim on the public authorities 
which actual residence gives. If they have no such 
place of citizenship, a still stronger effort must be made 
to secure employment, or to transport them to some 
other place where work is promised. Especially if the 
applicant is young every effort should be made to return 
him to his home. 

If, on the other hand, the applicant is a confirmed 
tramp, without relatives or a home, he should be set to 
work, under compulsion if need be. If he is .an impostor, 
the alternative of work or imprisonment might be pre- 
sented to him. If he is ill or injured, medical treatment 



THE HOMELESS MAN 67 

should be provided, and if he is crippled or otherwise 
incapacitated for earning a living at ordinary work, 
private charity should be called upon to establish him 
in some of the trades adapted to cripples, or, if this is 
impossible, to secure admission for him to some home. 
In short, every effort should be made to withdraw him 
from the life of the road and to restore him to the paths 
of normal living. 

There is a growing feeling that the right treatment of 
the tramp demands the establishment of detention 
colonies, in which the wanderer may be held under 
observation until his needs are really understood, and 
also of work colonies to which those unable or unwilling 
to make their living outside may be committed for train- 
/ ing, or for correctional treatment, as the case might 
demand. Colonies of this kind have been tried abroad, 
apparently with success, but the experiment has not yet 
been made under American conditions. The increasing 
seriousness of the problem of vagrancy is forcing atten- 
tion to the need of some such comprehensive system, and 
it is probable that before long a beginning in this direc- 
tion will be made. 

In most cases it will be found that the municipality is 
not at present equipped to handle the problem with the 
thoroughness it demands. Ordinarily, however, there 
will be a municipal lodging house or some similar insti- 
tution, wherein every homeless man may receive food 
and shelter for a limited time, usually being expected to 
do some work in return. Or either public or private- 
effort will maintain a woodyard, in which an applicant 
will be permitted to work a given time, receiving pay- 
ment in food or cash or other necessaries, as his circum- 
stances may demand. Sometimes, especially if the place 



68 HOW TO HELP 

is sustained by private contributions, work will be given 
only after thorough investigation or when someone 
promises to pay for the help received by the applicant. 
The commonest method of arranging this is for the 
management to issue tickets, entitling the holder to a 
given amount of work to be paid for in some specified 
way. Anyone who wishes to respond helpfully to the 
appeal of the homeless man may easily provide himself 
with these tickets, giving them in response to an appeal 
for alms with the assurance that the applicant will re- 
ceive temporary help if he is willing to do anything more 
than beg for it. 

If there is no public lodge or its equivalent, it is usu- 
ally possible to carry out a modification of this last plan 
by buying tickets for some lodging house of a little bet- 
ter character than the ordinary cheap place, and giving 
these. Since it is always possible that such tickets may 
be sold or traded for liquor, it is well to have an under- 
standing with the manager of the place selected that they 
are to be honored only on the date written across the 
face, and to date each one when giving it. This will not 
entirely prevent the possibility of their misuse, but it 
will at least diminish it. The Salvation Army frequently 
has lodging houses or industrial homes which may be thus 
used, and every city has missions which carry on lodg- 
ing houses for homeless men in connection with their 
work. Missions, however, should be made use of with 
much caution. Some of them are managed by intelli- 
gent, conscientious and devoted men and women, and 
are doing good work, while others no less surely degrade 
and demoralize the applicant sent to them. 

"Yes," complacently remarked the manager of one of 
this latter type, "when a man comes to me for help, I 



THE HOMELESS MAN 69 

pray with him, and if his heart is touched I encourage 
him by giving him something. I make him pray every 
time he wants something, too." And this particular 
manager never understood why his fellow religionists 
looked upon him with some doubt, and the organized 
societies of the place refused to send their homeless 
applicants to his mission. Ordinarily it is unwise to 
send men to missions which are not kept clean, which 
do not afford opportunities for a bath, which do not 
demand some equivalent, preferably in work, for their 
accommodations, and which force prayers and religious 
questioning upon their lodger, regardless of his wishes 
in the matter. Unless one is sure of the character of a 
mission it is better to make use of ordinary lodging 
houses; they will not be as helpful as a good mission 
may, but at least they will not train the lodger to make 
a profession of religious emotions for the sake of get- 
ting food and perhaps money thereby. 

It must be admitted that merely sending a man to a 
lodging house, or to some place where he can do a 
limited amount of work in return for what he gets will 
not help him very effectively. It is better than giving 
him money, as he must at least, if he makes any use of 
his gift, receive food and lodging, while the money 
would be apt to go for liquor or some similar purpose. 
Beyond this temporary relief, however, it leaves the 
applicant where it found him. If the community is 
properly equipped for the care of wanderers, a man once 
referred to the right agency will be more constructively 
dealt with and placed in the way of regaining his 
proper standing. In the smaller and more backward 
places, the temporary relief is often as much as the citi- 
zen can hope to give, and it is only in such communi- 



70 HOW TO HELP 

ties that he should resort to the devices mentioned in the 
preceding paragraphs. 

Even in these places, if one has time and inclination 
to follow up a case, permanent help may be given. "I 
know positively," said one clergyman of wide experi- 
ence, "that there is no truth in the saying that every 
homeless man is a fraud. Most of them are, I admit, 
but you never know when you will strike the exception. 
I remember one young fellow who came to me with a 
hard luck story. He was a foreigner, and had had a run 
of misfortune, he said. He had been in the hospital 
until he lost a good place, and on coming out couldn't 
get started. He had tramped from place to place look- 
ing for work till his money was gone and he had been 
begging his way. It had been over a year since he had 
been at work, and he looked as if he had become thor- 
oughly used to the tramping life. He looked, too, as if 
he had done a good deal of drinking in his time, though 
he professed sobriety. 

"It was a story I had heard a great many times before, 
but I did what I usually do — volunteered to pay his 
board at the Salvation Army lodge for a few days, if 
he would give me the address of his last employer and 
let me write to him. He hesitated about this a little, but 
finally agreed and gave me the address. I was a trifle 
surprised to get a reply. I had more than half sup- 
posed that about the time one was due my man would 
disappear, and I should hear nothing more of him. How- 
ever, the former employer wrote kindly of him, saying 
he was a good worker, but so much addicted to drink 
that it had been found necessary to discharge him. If 
I thought there was any chance of his keeping sober, he 
could have his old place back. 



THE HOMELESS MAN 



71 



"I laid the matter before him frankly and talked over 
the situation. He owned up to the drinking charge; 
said he had got in with bad companions when he first 
came over to this country, and had gone down hill. He 
promised to do his best to keep sober, and from his look 
and manner I judged he would keep his word. I gave 
him a ticket back to his old place, and a letter to a clergy- 
man I knew there, asking that he would look after him 
a little and try to supply some other interests to take 
the place of the old dissipated companions, and I won- 
dered a good deal, as he started off, whether I should 
ever hear of him again. 

"I did. About three months later, I had a letter from 
the clergyman, thanking me for sending the young man 
to his church. He had become an active member, the 
clergyman said, and was exemplary in his conduct. Not 
long after I had a letter from the man himself, inclosing 
twenty dollars. He figured up that I had spent about 
ten dollars on him, first and last, which was a consider- 
able overestimate, and he wanted both to return it and 
to put an equal amount in my hands for use in some 
similar case. I have heard of him at intervals since, and 
though that was four years ago, the reports are still 
good, so that for once, I feel convinced, an unknown 
applicant turned out a good risk." 

Most of us are hardly in a position to follow up a 
case in this manner, but it is possible for every one to 
gain such a knowledge of the provisions made by his 
community for the care of tramps, or of the opportu- 
nities offered by missions and lodging houses, as will 
enable him to refer an applicant wisely. It will, of 
course, take some time and some trouble to do so, but 
this cannot be avoided. That is the initial gift which 



72 HOW TO HELP 

we must make if we wish to be helpful to our wander- 
ing brothers. In any city possessing a charity organi- 
zation society or any similar association, it is well to 
consult its agent, who can give a list of the city's pos- 
sibilities in this line, together with details which will 
enable one to form some idea of the relative merits of 
the different places available. 

Where such a society exists, the wisest plan for the 
citizen approached by a stranger with a plea for help is 
to send him directly to its office. If the society has 
not itself the means of providing for the applicant, it 
is sure to be in touch with the agencies which can and 
will do so, and it is in a position to follow up the matter 
more effectively than can the private citizen. This does 
not at all mean that the citizen cannot do much more 
than merely to refer the applicant and then dismiss him 
from his mind. If he is willing to give more time and 
attention to the matter, the society will welcome his 
cooperation, will report to him whatever is learned con- 
cerning the applicant and will take counsel with him as 
to the right thing to do when the facts are gathered. 

Ordinarily the man to whom an appeal is made has 
two objections to following this course. In the first 
place, he is rather hazy as to where the charity organi- 
zation office is and how an applicant should be referred 
there ; and in the second he has a general idea that such 
societies indulge in a great deal of red tape, and that an 
applicant is left to suffer while they are going through 
the proper preliminaries to relief. This latter idea is 
industriously fostered by the applicant. " 'Taint no use 
going there, boss; they don't do nothing but ask you a 
lot of questions and tell you to come back again." That 
or something like it will be the answer in at least half 



THE HOMELESS MAN 73 

the cases in which an experienced applicant is referred 
to such an office. 

In regard to the first objection, as has already been 
said, some trouble is involved in looking up the society; 
that must be confessed — the only question is whether 
the end is not worth the effort. The trouble need not 
be great. The city directory will tell whether there is 
such a society, and if so where its offices are, and then 
a call at these, made whenever leisure permits, will place 
one in possession of the information needed to make use 
of the society's agency. On the whole it seems rather 
a small price to pay for the results attained. 

The other objection is not so easily dispelled, as it 
usually requires a good deal of experience with charity 
organization work before a non-professional worker 
becomes wholly convinced that the plea is unfounded. 
It would, of course, be rash to say that no such societies 
have ever shown a fondness for red tape and unneces- 
sary delays. It can, however, be confidently asserted 
that such a state of affairs is unusual to the last degree, 
and that ordinarily these societies subordinate every- 
thing else to the desire to be really and permanently 
helpful to the applicant. Their system of inter-society 
helpfulness makes it easy for them to obtain quick and 
accurate information, very difficult to secure otherwise, 
on which proper action may be based without delay. 

"The value of the inter-society work came home to 
me strongly in the case of a boy of sixteen last winter," 
said one professional worker. "He had applied to a 
stranger on the streets of New York for help, telling 
some kind of hard luck tale. The stranger happened to 
be familiar with the work of the charity organization 
society, and instead of giving him anything, promptly 



74 HOW TO HELP 

brought him to the office. At that time they had an 
efficient mendicancy squad in New York — it has since, 
unfortunately, been given up — and the boy, who was at 
first disposed to turn sulky and refuse information of 
any kind, found himself confronted with the alternative 
of telling the truth, or being arrested on a charge of 
begging. He chose the former. He had come from a 
little city a couple of hundred miles away, he said, where 
he had a sister at such an address, who would certainly 
send for him if she knew of his plight. He had run 
away from her home as a result of some little trouble, 
thinking it would be easy to get work in New York. 
On his first night there he had had his pocket picked, 
and, the companions he had found in the cheap lodging 
house to which he had drifted had laughed at his plans 
of finding work. He couldn't get anything to do with- 
out friends, they assured him, and besides it would be 
easier and far more exciting to make a living by 'touch- 
ing' strangers. So he had tried it, and was very much 
alarmed at the results. 

"Promptly a telegram was sent to the agent of the 
society in his home city, who no less promptly called at 
the address given. The sister not only verified the boy's 
story, but gave references which proved that he had 
always borne a good character, and that his running 
away was a bit of boyish folly not likely to be repeated. 
She was more than willing to send for him, and his 
former employer was willing to give him his place 
again. A message was returned forthwith, and within 
less than thirty-six hours from the time the boy made 
his first essay in begging, he was on his way back to his 
home." 

It is not always possible, of course, for the results 



THE HOMELESS MAN 



75 



of a reference to a charitable society to be as prompt 
and pleasing as in this case, but ordinarily the fact that 
they are not so will not be due to any lack of energy or 
good will on the part of the society. Also, if the citizen 
really fears that a case will be neglected, he may easily 
prevent any such result by taking a personal interest in 
it. The probable effect of this course will be not only 
to make him more intelligently helpful to the next 
unknown applicant, but to convince him that the organ- 
ized societies are doing their best, and that the charge 
of red tape brought against them is due either to 
ignorance or malice. 

In communities so small that they have none of the 
agencies just discussed, the difficulties of dealing with 
wandering men are much increased. Ordinarily in such 
places it is impossible to deal with them in constructive 
fashion, and whether one gives or withholds help will 
depend upon how willing one is to secure a future good 
at the possible cost of temporary suffering. Men like 
Josiah Flynt, who have studied the subject at first hand, 
living among tramps and knowing the life of the road 
by personal experience, claim that the best and kindest 
thing is absolutely to refuse all help. With most of us, 
however, it is a difficult matter to refuse a man food 
when he may be really hungry, and when there is no 
other place where he is likely to obtain it. For those 
who have this sentiment probably the best plan is the 
old-fashioned one of keeping on hand some work 
demanding little skill or intelligence, and insisting on a 
fair amount of this being done as a condition precedent 
to giving food. News of such an attitude spreads very 
quickly among professional tramps, and it is pretty cer- 
tain that within a short time a family which follows 



7 6 HOW TO HELP 

this course persistently will receive applications only 
from those who are honestly looking for work. If any 
opportunity presents itself for giving the applicant 
employment beyond the limited amount needed to pay 
for his immediate relief, it is usually quite safe to offer 
it. No matter what a man's past record, it cannot hurt 
him to do honest work for fair wages, and the willing- 
ness to do it may mark the first step in his progress 
away from trampdom. 



CHAPTER VIII 



THE HOMELESS WOMAN 



The wandering woman presents a more serious prob- 
lem than the wandering man only because we ordinarily 
feel a stronger sense of responsibility for a woman than 
for a man, and appreciate more keenly the gravity of her 
lapse from the normal standard. Fortunately she is 
rarely met with away from the large cities in which it 
is possible to secure the advantages of organized effort 
in dealing with her. In the main, the same course 
should be followed with her as with the homeless man, 
with some variations due to the attitude of society 
toward women. She is apt to belong to one of four 
classes. She may be the victim of misfortune or acci- 
dent, or of her own wilfulness, which yet has nothing 
vicious about it; she may belong to the class of the 
inefficient and shiftless, who are always on the verge of 
homelessness ; she may be technically a bad woman; she 
may be a professional impostor. Women of the latter 
class, though frequently homeless, rarely make appeals 
on the street, and may be more conveniently considered 
under the discussion of impostors which follows. 

It is not often that a respectable woman finds herself 
really without shelter, but it occasionally happens. A 
girl looking for work goes to a strange city, expecting 
to stay with some acquaintance there, and finds on 
arrival that the acquaintance has moved, leaving no 
address. Or she goes to take work, and finds that the 
place promised her has been given to another, and that 
s/he is left without means either to return to her friends 

77 



yS HOW TO HELP 

or to secure shelter where she is. Sometimes, though 
very rarely, a self-supporting woman who has lost her 
work and run into debt for her rent, is turned adrift by 
her landlord. Sometimes a woman whose savings have 
been exhausted by illness finds herself discharged from 
a hospital with nowhere to go. However it may have 
come about, the situation of a respectable woman home- 
less on the streets at night is so distressing, so full of 
possible dangers and certain terrors and suffering, that 
common humanity requires us to fit ourselves to be of 
service should she appeal to us. 

Even more full of danger, though not so beset with 
conscious terror, is the position of the wayward girl 
who has run away with a general idea of going on the 
stage, or without any idea at all, so far as can be found. 
She appears from time to time, but fortunately is very 
rare. Far too often her situation is discovered only 
by those more disposed to harm than help, and she does 
not come to the notice of the charitably inclined until 
she has entered another group. 

Of far more frequent occurrence is the woman who 
is homeless through general inefficiency and shiftless- 
ness. In every large city there is a class of women, 
widows or single, who live in a curious, drifting 
fashion, going about from place to place, and doing 
whatever they are capable of accomplishing, generally 
in return for board and lodging, with such cast-off 
clothes as they can get. They are too inefficient and 
untrained to take places as domestics in the ordinary 
household, so they live with neighbors but little better 
off than themselves, or "mind the children" for some 
woman who is occupied away from home. They may 
or may not drink on occasion' — there is much in their 



THE HOMELESS WOMAN 



79 



way of living to incline them to intemperance, and little 
to hold them back from it — and their past may not be 
above suspicion, but still they are not vicious women; 
they are merely depressing and discouraging, lacking 
in moral vertebrae and industrial training. Unless they 
have families willing to be responsible for them, they 
are liable at any time to be thrown out of their irregular 
employment, and to fail of finding any other refuge. 
The almshouse is apt to be their ultimate destination, 
but they go through a long course of vicissitudes, drift- 
ing about from place to place, before they make that 
haven. 

The woman of openly bad character does not often 
appeal for help to those outside of her own class, but 
occasionally chance will bring one into contact with 
such a woman who really wishes to break away from 
her mode of life, or who may be persuaded to wish it. 
The task of reestablishing her is delicate and difficult, 
and should not be attempted by beginners in philan- 
thropic effort. They can render their best service by 
acquainting themselves with the rescue agencies to 
which they may send, or, better, take such a woman. 
Thereafter their friendly interest may be of both 
pleasure and benefit to her, but they should act only in 
consultation with some experienced worker. 

It is obvious that women of these different classes 
need widely different treatment, and it is equally obvious 
that no one of them is adequately relieved by the gift 
of a small sum of money. What was said in connection 
with homeless men of the necessity for individual treat- 
ment, of the need for learning the real circumstances 
and adapting the course of action to these, applies even 
more strongly in the case of homeless women. Help 



80 HOW TO HELP 

which is really helpful simply cannot be given offhand, 
and the only way of making oneself effective is by learn- 
ing what are the resources of one's own place and being 
ready to call into play the established agencies. 

A little investigation will usually show in every city 
or town some respectable place in which a wandering 
woman may obtain at least a night's lodging, and in 
most places this shelter will be continued until sufficient 
knowledge of the circumstances can be gained for intel- 
ligent action. It may be a city lodging-house or a ward 
in the charity building. It may be a shelter maintained 
by the Salvation Army. In some places the Young 
Women's Christian Association conducts a home, one 
part of which is set apart for transients who arrive 
unannounced and unattended. Where such a home is 
to be found it makes a particularly good refuge for the 
respectable woman left temporarily homeless by acci- 
dent or misfortune. In most of the larger cities the 
Travellers Aid Associations maintain agents at the 
principal railroad stations for the special purpose of 
helping girls or women who find themselves accident- 
ally left without the means of securing shelter, or in 
other need or danger. These agents can usually give 
the addresses of respectable houses to which, by becom- 
ing surety for the charges, one may send a woman 
whose appearance indicates that it would be a hardship 
for her to be obliged to go to a municipal lodging house 
or to a rescue home or shelter. For others it may be 
well to take advantage of the city's provision for the 
homeless. In any place which maintains a charity 
organization society or its equivalent, it is the wisest 
course to take the applicant directly there, or, if that is 
impossible, to give her its address, as the agent in charge 



THE HOMELESS WOMAN 8l 

should know thoroughly the resources of the town, and 
be able to judge where the woman may find the care 
best suited to her needs. 

In any case the lodging determined upon should be 
only a resting place until such facts can be learned as 
will make it possible to devise some adequate plan of 
action. The woman who is homeless through accident 
or misfortune or the deception of others should have the 
most careful help to return her to her friends or to 
establish her in independence. When once a place of 
shelter has been found, she usually presents rather a 
simple problem, and one which she herself can take the 
major part in solving. Sometimes all that is needed is 
a refuge till she can communicate with her friends at 
home. At others, it may be necessary to raise money 
to return her to the place whence she came, or to 
arrange for her board and lodging until she can find 
work where she is. Each case has to be decided on its 
own merits, but the woman's own judgment will often 
point out the right line of action. 

Far more difficult is the case of the girl who has left 
her home intentionally. Sometimes she runs away with 
a girl companion to have a good time, regardless of the 
dangers she incurs. Sometimes she goes off by herself, 
fired by the wanderlust which we are more accustomed 
to look for in boys. And sometimes she is led off by a 
companion who deserts her among strangers. Unfor- 
tunately she is not apt to appeal for help, and so her 
situation remains unknown until she has suffered irre- 
trievable harm. Sometimes, however, accident will 
make it known, and then it is plainly obligatory to inter- 
fere. If she can be persuaded to go to some Home or 
Shelter until her friends can be communicated with, the 
6 



82 HOW TO HELP 

matter becomes simple, but too often she will not listen 
to such a proposition. In that case, in any community 
where a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Chil- 
dren exists, it is best to take counsel with its agents. If 
the girl is under a specified age, differing according to 
the state, such a society may have the legal right to hold 
her or to return her to her home. If there is no such 
society, the agent of the Associated Charities should be 
consulted, or, failing such an organization, the Chief of 
Police, who should know whether or not anything can 
be done to save the girl, even against her own will. 

Cases of this kind, fortunately, occur but rarely. A 
more frequent problem, and a sufficiently difficult one, 
is presented by the shiftless and inefficient women whose 
own resources have failed, and who find themselves 
without a refuge. It is hard to accomplish much for 
these unless they can be kept under guidance for a time. 
In some localities Homes exist in which they may receive 
industrial training, proper nourishment and some 
stimulus to their ambition and pride, and under these 
conditions really wonderful transformations are some- 
times accomplished. 

"I think," said one professional worker, reflectively, 
"that Musidora Whitman was the most discouraging 
specimen I had ever come across when she drifted into 
my office late one November afternoon. She was forty- 
seven, and according to her story she had well-to-do 
relatives who wouldn't own the connection. 

"She had been living with an acquaintance, helping 
round for her board, till the acquaintance's husband 
grew tired of the arrangement and put her out. She 
had no idea of what to do. She had been to the overseer 
of the poor and tried to get into the almshouse, but he 



THE HOMELESS WOMAN 83 

had said she was an able-bodied woman who ought to 
support herself, and refused to take her. Her hat had 
some limp and broken feathers on it, her dress was 
ragged and bedraggled, and her shoes were run down 
at the heel and flopped as she walked. She told her 
story in a dull, uninterested sort of way, and then sat 
there limply, waiting to see what I would do about it. 

"For a while I was considerably puzzled myself over 
that question. It was easy to provide a place for her to 
stay for a day or two, but beyond that the prospect 
wasn't bright. It was quite true she had well-to-do 
relatives. She had one brother, quite a prominent busi- 
ness man in our place, taxed for twenty thousand dol- 
lars worth of real estate, and a sister nearly as well off. 
They wouldn't have anything to do with her though; 
9aid she had always been lazy and that when they gave 
her a home she was 'sassy,' and made trouble. I felt 
like making some myself over the calm way in which 
they ignored their sister's position, but of course she 
had no legal hold on them. I couldn't persuade or 
shame them into doing anything. 

"Housework was out of the question. No one would 
have taken Musidora into a respectable kitchen, and 
shop or factory work was equally impracticable. Finally 
I went to the managers of a rescue home and laid the 
case before them. Musidora wasn't a woman of bad 
character, I told them, but they had room in their home, 
and were they going to force her to qualify herself for 
admission? There was no place for her elsewhere; 
wouldn't they overlook the fact of her technical respect- 
ability and try her? 

"The managers were sensible, warm-hearted women,. 
and they rose to the occasion. They strained the wording 



84 HOW TO HELP 

of their constitution a little, but they decided that Musi- 
dora was, on the word of her relatives and by her own 
confession, lazy; that laziness was a grave moral defect; 
that their home existed for the purpose of helping 
women to overcome moral defects, and that therefore 
Musidora was eminently fit to enter. They took her in, 
and the last glimpse I had of Musidora she was trailing 
forlornly along, in the same dispirited, uninterested 
fashion, behind a brisk and cheerful matron who was 
bearing her off toward the bathroom. 

"It was six or eight months before I saw her again, 
and then I couldn't believe it was the same woman. How 
that matron had done it I never could understand, but 
she had taught Musidora to work. She learned in rather 
a Chinese fashion at first, doing one thing over and over 
until she could do it just as her instructor did. She was 
slow about learning, too, and it was some time before 
the matron woke up to the fact that Musidora was the 
best cleaner she had in the house. I suppose Musidora 
had never before been best in anything, and it waked 
her up all along the line. When the matron began send- 
ing her out in response to requests for a good woman 
to clean, her pride was delightful to witness. Then sh$ 
suddenly shocked the management by declaring that 
she had been long enough in the Home, and that she 
meant to leave. Of course they could not restrain her, 
but they watched her go with misgivings. 

"The misgivings proved to be entirely unfounded. She 
secured a place for herself as domestic in a country 
place, where she was practically a member of the family, 
and where her ability in cleaning made her a valued 
assistant. While in the Home she had learned to make 
rug9, and as that was an unknown art in her new 



THE HOMELESS WOMAN 85 

locality, she found herself able to teach others, and to 
sell what she made in her leisure times. She throve 
under the new conditions, and all danger of her drop- 
ping back to the old ways now seems past. She has a 
bank account of her own, and is a respected member of 
the little community in which she appears to have taken 
root. She comes to see me once in a while, and she 
always serves as a reminder that no one, no matter how 
depressing her situation may be, is really in a hopeless 
condition." 

For the woman who has gone wrong and who wishes 
to reform, special homes exist, and ordinarily by far 
the best plan is to get her into one of these. If she has 
relatives who wish to receive her, it is usually better for 
her to go to them, but generally speaking it will be 
found that she either has no near relatives, or that the 
family ties have been ignored for so long that it is 
impossible to reestablish them. It is best however, to 
make the effort. If a rescue home must be resorted to, 
there are obvious advantages in choosing one at a dis- 
tance from the scenes of her past life, when this can 
be done. 

In communities so small that there are neither lodg- 
ing places available for homeless women, nor organized 
societies to take the responsibility of their care, there is 
no satisfactory method of dealing with their need, except 
at the cost of far more trouble and expense than most 
persons feel able to give. Only by some such process as 
that just outlined of detention and sorting out, can they 
be adequately and permanently relieved. When this: 
treatment is impossible many, perhaps most people,, 
when approached by a homeless woman will prefer to 
give something in the hope that it may prove helpful 



86 HOW TO HELP 

even though inadequate, rather than to turn away alto- 
gether. Some will feel that such a gift is so likely to 
be harmful that it is better to refuse. This is a question 
for each to settle for himself. The ideal way, of course, 
would be to take the applicant home, attend to her 
immediate wants, and write to the addresses she gives 
for fuller information, basing one's future action on the 
answers received, but the practical difficulties in the way 
of such a plan will prevent its being followed generally. 
Fortunately, as has been said before, the homeless 
woman seldom appears in small communities, while in 
the larger ones the organized agencies capable of giving 
her proper care exist, and it is possible without much 
trouble to learn what they are and how to call them into 
play. ^ 

It is apparent from all this why the professional phil- 
anthropist tries to discourage giving money to appli- 
cants on the street. It is unfortunate, perhaps, that 
the warning has been voiced in just the way it has, for 
obviously what he wishes is not to keep people from 
giving in response to such appeals, but to induce them 
to give far more than the dime or quarter or half dollar 
which may be handed over casually, with very little idea 
beyond that of salving one's conscience in the easiest 
way. Such alms can never under any circumstances 
meet the real needs of the situation, and so far as they 
have any effect, it is likely to be for ill. 

Occasionally one hears a protest against giving to 
strangers, based on the almost certain waste of the 
money so given. This seems an entirely insufficient 
ground of objection. The money is really a trivial mat- 
ter, and the reckless giver probably gets as much satis- 
faction from this method of dispensing it as from any 



THE HOMELESS WOMAN 87 

other. The real objection is to the inadequacy of the 
help so given under the best of circumstances, and its 
active harmfulness under any others. If we admit that 
our weaker brothers have any claim upon us at all we 
must also admit that their claim is for really helpful and 
beneficial treatment, which can be secured for them only 
through a rather elaborate organization of charitable 
forces. We need not limit our action to referring them 
to the agencies through which this organization can be 
made effective. We can do much that is helpful and 
kindly by following up the matter, and cooperating with 
these agencies. But in order to know how to help at 
all the first step is to make ourselves familiar with the 
resources of our own city and the means of utilizing 
these. There is more, much more, than this which we 
may well seek to accomplish, but less we cannot fairly 
do if we wish to respond to the appeal of the homeless. 



CHAPTER IX 

BEGGARS AND IMPOSTORS 

"We can have just as many beggars as we are willing to pay 
for, and it is the supply of cash that determines the number." — 
E. T. Devine. 

It may to some seem illogical to make any distinction 
between the homeless men and women whom we have 
been considering and beggars, inasmuch as the former 
certainly beg. Nevertheless, for convenience's sake, it 
is well to treat them separately, putting aside for the 
present the homeless applicants who ask for food or a 
night's lodging, claiming that their need is mainly due to 
their present inability to find work, and treating under 
this second grouping those artists of the profession who 
bring to it a considerable degree of skill and intelligence, 
and whose profits are in many cases surprisingly large. 

It is rather difficult to draw any plain line of demar- 
cation between beggars and impostors, since the two 
classes so frequently overlap. A rough but convenient 
classification groups these mendicants who make a more 
serious plea for relief as professional impostors, pro- 
fessional beggars, and accidental beggars, the latter 
being men or women unused to begging who resort to 
it through stress of misfortune. 

Perhaps. the chief distinction to be made between the 
professional impostor and the professional beggar is 
that while the latter frankly seeks alms, usually dis- 
playing some deformity or incapacity as a reason for 
the appeal, the former disguises the fact of beggary by 

88 



BEGGARS AND IMPOSTORS 89 

an elaborate plea for a loan or for temporary assistance, 
which he pledges himself to return at some future date, 
presumably the Greek Kalends. Generally, too, the 
mere beggar is content to display his deformity in some 
public place, while the impostor penetrates home and 
office, selecting his victim with care and adapting his 
story to his hearer with singular effectiveness. The pro- 
fessional impostor, indeed, often displays talent of a high 
order. Knowledge of human nature, tact, quick per- 
ception, instinctive adaptation to another's mood or 
point of view, audacity, ingenuity, poise and self-pos- 
session — all these are absolutely necessary if he is to rise 
to the higher forms of imposition. The impostor 
matches his wits against society as a whole, and un- 
questionably many of them keenly enjoy the excitement 
of the game. Max Miiller has an excellent statement of 
the position : 

"Some of my beggar acquaintances were so clever 
and so well educated that they might easily have made a 
living for themselves ; but, as one of them told me when 
I thought I had made him thoroughly ashamed of him- 
self, they prefer begging to any other kind of occupa- 
tion. "Talk of shooting partridges or pheasants/ said 
he; 'talk of racing or gambling — there's no sport like 
begging. There must always be risk in sport, and the 
risk in begging is very great. You are fighting,' my 
half-penitent informant continued, 'against tremendous 
odds. You ring at the door, and you must first of all 
face a servant, who generally scrutinizes you with great 
suspicion and declines to take your name or your card 
unless you have a clean shirt and a decent pair of boots. 
Then, after you have been admitted to the presence, you 
have to watch every expression of your enemy, or your 
friend, as the case may be. You have to face the 
cleverest people in the world, and you know all the time 
that the slightest mistake in your looks or in the tone 



90 HOW TO HELP 

of your voice may lead to ruin. You may be kicked out 
of the house, and if you meet with a high-minded and 
public-spirited gentleman, who doesn't mind trouble and 
expense, you may find yourself in the hands of the police 
for trying to obtain money under false pretences. No/ 
he concluded, 'I have known in my time what hunting 
and shooting and gambling are; but I assure you there's 
no sport like begging." 1 

In view of Miiller's life-long trials with these pro- 
fessional begging impostors, it is interesting to notice 
that one of the impostors who has recently caused the 
most trouble to the New York Charity Organization 
Society carries on his operations under the pretext of 
having been "lately assistant to Prof. Max Muller, at 
Oxford." 

The impostor of this kind may carry on his trade by 
writing or by personal interviews. If the latter is his 
chosen mode he is apt to select as his victims either 
clergymen or those who have a reputation for open- 
handed liberality. In either case he varies his story to 
suit the disposition and antecedents of those whom he 
approaches. If he addresses a clergyman, he displays a 
surprising knowledge of other clergymen of that 
denomination, or of the doctrines and organization and 
leading men of his church. If he applies to a layman, 
he is apt to show a similar familiarity with his family 
history, or to know all about some good but absent 
friend, whom he claims as a friend of his own, and on 
his acquaintance with whom he bases his appeal. There 
is no limit to the infinite variety of his story, but there 
is one permanent feature which appears through all its 
transformations — his temporary need of a loan, varying 
in amount according to the circumstances of his 1 victim 

*Auld Lang Syne, First Series. 



BEGGARS AND IMPOSTORS 



91 



and his confidence in his own ability to carry off the 
imposition successfully. It is impossible to estimate 
what proportion of the amount annually given in 
"charity" is carried off by people of this class, but at 
least it must be admitted that they give something in 
return, and the skill with which they concoct their 
stories extorts a certain admiration even from those on 
whom they impose. 

The course of action in response to such appeals 
should be the same as in the case of homeless men and 
women. The community should maintain some place of 
temporary detention in which they may be cared for 
while a thorough enquiry is made into the truth of their 
story, and this should be followed either by such help 
as their situation demands, should their account of them- 
selves prove true, or by legal punishment, should it be 
fictitious. Unwillingness on their part to accept shelter 
in such a refuge is in itself rather a strong indication of 
fraud. 

Sometimes an applicant will present strong reasons 
why he cannot afford the loss of time involved in such 
a course; a friend is dying, or work is waiting for him 
which will be forfeited by delay, or there is some other 
pressing need for haste. Here again it is wise to make 
use of the associated charities, which usually have cor- 
respondents throughout the country. No matter where 
the applicant's dying friend or waiting work may be 
located, the agent can generally reach by telegraph or 
telephone some other agent who in a few hours will 
return an answer proving the truth or falsity of the story 
told. 

Impostors of this kind not infrequently resort to 
writing begging letters — a form of beggary which 



9 2 



HOW TO HELP 



makes less strenuous demands upon its followers. All 
that is needed is a lively imagination, a supply of sta- 
tionery, and perseverance; the free-handed kindliness 
of the public will do the rest. Middle-aged bachelors 
represent themselves as despairing fathers of children 
dying for lack of proper medical care; couples living in 
comfort on the proceeds of former letters describe 
themselves as destitute working people about to be 
turned into the street with their large brood of imagi- 
nary children, for overdue rent; men and women alike 
wax eloquent over the sufferings of the fictitious con- 
sort, for whose sake alone they overcome their own 
impulse to starve in tragic dignity, and force themselves 
to ask a loan; and with equal impartiality letter-writers 
of either sex represent themselves as youthful and 
devoted daughters, sacrificing their lives to the care of 
an invalid mother, for whom, notwithstanding, they are 
unable to secure the care she needs. Sometimes these 
letters are very clever productions ; sometimes they 
are so clumsily constructed, so garnished with weak 
sentimentality and conventional religious phraseology, 
that the wonder is they are not thrown away half 
read. In any case, it seems hardly necessary to com- 
ment on the unwisdom of sending money in response to 
such appeals until the matter has been looked into by 
some competent investigator, and the story verified or 
disproved. 

Ability of a different kind is displayed by the pro- 
fessional street beggar, who secures alms by some dis- 
play of infirmity or exhibition of supposed suffering. 
The commonest method is that of the miserable man or 
woman who crouches over a wheezy hand organ, dis- 
playing somewhere a placard : "Pity the Blind." Some- 



BEGGARS AND IMPOSTORS 



93 



times the placards go into more detail, recounting the 
circumstances under which sight was lost, or metrically 
invoking a blessing upon the giver. In one southern city 
for several months a woman reaped rich harvests by dis- 
playing a sign which read: "Ladies and Gentlemen, 
please pity this poor Lady, who is suffering from Sun- 
stroke and La Grippe. I have five children. The Lord 
loveth a cheerful giver." 

If the beggar is crippled or paralytic, or knows how 
to simulate either misfortune, he may simply plant him- 
self in a public place, letting his defect speak for itself, 
while an upturned hat or empty tin cup beside him sug- 
gests his plea. Or he may station himself on the street 
with a bunch of shoe-laces, or a package of pencils, 
which he nominally offers for sale. Nominally, for it 
is seldom that he uses his stock as anything but an 
excuse for presenting his need. "Of course," said one 
such street applicant, in a moment of confidence, "we 
don't expect that people are really going to buy our 
goods. It would be a pretty mean person, don't you 
think, who'd take pencils off a blind man? But if we 
don't have something the police may get after us for beg- 
ging, so we have pencils or sticking plaster, or any other 
old thing, it doesn't matter what." 

If, however, the cripple has a little more ambition and 
energy, he is apt to drag himself through the crowded 
cabins of ferries, or to appear on trains, or, in some 
towns, to go along the street handing out cards, fre- 
quently entitled "The Cripple's Appeal." These appeals 
are almost always in what passes for verse, and bear a 
strong resemblance to one another. The following is a 
favorite form : 



94 HOW TO HELP 

"thought for all" 

Stranger, look as I pass by, 

As you are now so once was I ; 

As I am now, so you might be, 

But I pray to God it shall never be. 

For every cent you give, kind stranger, 

I am sure you will be blest ; 

You will never miss it from your purse 

When the cripple lies at rest. 

Price. — Give what you can. 

The comparison between the cripple and the person 
applied to is found in most of these productions. A 
favorite plan is to work in somewhere an apposite quota- 
tion from the Bible, as in the last line of the following 
sample : 

GOOD LUCK TO THE PURCHASER OF THIS CARD 

I once was happy the same as you, 

But now I'm a cripple with nothing to do. 

I'm compelled to ask strangers some assistance to give, 

So please give me something — "Live and Let Live." 

I pray God will reward you, my wants you will relieve, 

And remember it is more blessed to give than to receive. 

Please Give What You Wish. 

From these comparatively simple methods the profes- 
sional beggar goes on to the most elaborate deceptions. 
Sometimes he is able to feign epileptic seizures, or 
strange and appalling deformity and paralysis. Some- 
times he neither has nor pretends to have any infirmity, 
but gets up a little scene to impress upon the spectator 



BEGGARS AND IMPOSTORS 95 

his need. One of the most effective devices of this kind 
is that practiced by the "crust thrower." He is usually a 
man of respectable appearance, gotten up with a careful 
mixture of neatness and shabbiness. By preference he 
operates in a shopping district at an hour when the 
streets are fairly filled. He carries with him as his 
stock in trade a piece of stale bread, which, when he 
thinks he is near an impressionable subject, he con- 
strives to throw unobserved into the street. A moment 
later he pounces upon it with a gesture of uncontrol- 
lable eagerness, and commences to devour it. He has 
not said a word, he has not, even by a look, begged for 
alms, but fancy the feelings of the comfortable and kind- 
hearted passer-by who suddenly sees a man, his whole 
appearance betraying pressing need, snatch a crust of 
bread from the street and hungrily swallow it. Nat- 
urally, returns are prompt. 

It is quite impossible for the private citizen, acting 
alone, to deal satisfactorily with these street beggars. 
He has neither the time nor the resources to give the 
help that they require. His usual feeling is that he can 
give a little, and that if every one else would do the 
same,, the applicant's need would be met. The trouble 
with this plan is, that granting the applicant to be 
honest and anxious to make the best of his situation, the 
help tLus received in small and irregular sums is not 
enough to enable him to rise into any better condition. 
If he is helpable, he needs far more help than he is likely 
to obtain through unorganized giving, and the alms he 
receives merely keep him along from day to day in a 
degrading occupation. If, on the other hand, he is a 
fraudulent beggar, deliberately making use of a real 
infirmity or exploiting a pretended one in order to live 



gS HOW TO HELP 

easily on the alms intended to relieve genuine distress — 
for an impostor by dint of an artistic presentation will 
secure large returns where an honest man will barely 
support himself — most people will agree that help given 
him is wasted. Indeed, it is far worse than wasted, for 
under a wiser and kinder treatment, he might be led or 
forced into a self-supporting, self-respecting life, whereas 
under his present conditions he is steadily going down 
hill, morally and often physically. 

What, then, should be the attitude of the one to whom 
such an appeal is made? Plainly he should not give 
money. Neither should he refuse all help, if any really 
beneficial course can be substituted for this negative 
action. If his city supports a charity organization 
society, or any similar body, the really helpful course is 
to secure from the applicant his name and address, and 
to refer the matter to this society with an offer to con- 
tribute, if help is needed, whatever sum the giver can 
afford. If the applicant has no abode, he can be sent 
to the society in person. If the city maintains no such 
society, the best plan is to get the applicant's name and 
address, and ask the agent of some relief society to visit 
and try to discover the real situation. If for any reason 
neither of these courses is possible, it is better to refuse 
help. 

More complicated is the case of the applicant who 
comes to one's door asking help on the plea of a de- 
pendent family suffering for lack of food, fuel or med- 
ical care. Very frequently this applicant, if a man, asks 
for work, or if a woman, offers for sale some trifle, 
usually avowedly of her own make. This offer dis- 
guises to her mind the fact of beggary, and she will 
insist, if called to account, that she is earning her living 



BEGGARS AND IMPOSTORS 



97 



honestly. This would be so if she offered her wares, 
and left the anticipated purchaser to accept or reject 
them on their own merits, but she usually has some tale 
of extreme distress which so works on the feelings of 
the household that the article, without regard to its 
possible utility, is purchased, generally at a price out of 
all proportion to its value. 

The worst possible form of this kind of beggary is 
found when the woman carries with her a child, often 
a baby, going out by preference in the worst of weather, 
that the little one's situation may make her appeal irre- 
sistible. Under such circumstances no one has a right 
either to give, or, refusing to give, to let the woman go 
without an attempt to stop this abuse of the child. Chil- 
dren have a valid claim for protection, and if their own 
parents wrong them it is the imperative duty of anyone 
witnessing the wrong to take such steps as may be pos- 
sible to stop it. 

Whether or not, however, a child is involved, the 
only right way of dealing with such applicants is to 
secure the name and address with the purpose of having 
them visited and help obtained, if they are found to be 
really in need. It is not necessary to say or to imply 
that one doubts their story. It is sufficient to ask the 
address, saying one would like to send some one to call 
who may be able to help. The address thus obtained 
should be sent to the associated charities with a request 
for an investigation and report, or, if there is no such 
organization in the place, usually one of the relief 
societies will send some one to look into the matter. In 
places where the associated charities exist there need be 
no fear that this course will cause delay and conse- 



98 HOW TO HELP 

quent suffering, as such a society is always prepared to 
act immediately in a case which is sent in as urgent. 

• Very frequently it will be found that the address 
given is a fictitious one, in which case no further action 
is possible. When the family can be found, however, it 
will probably be learned that there is need of far more 
extensive and prolonged help than the applicant would 
ever have dreamed of asking. If the applicant is nor- 
mally a self-supporting, self-respecting workingman, he 
will resort to seeking aid from strangers only under the 
stress of extreme want, and he will be found in a condi- 
tion which may be immediately alleviated, but cannot 
be immediately remedied. If, on the other hand, he 
seeks his living by preference in this way, his restoration 
to the ranks of the self-supporting offers one of the 
most difficult problems of philanthropy, calling for long, 
patient and most careful treatment. 

In either case, there is no reason why the person refer- 
ring the applicant for investigation should feel that his 
duty ends with this reference. If he is willing to give 
personal work, the agent of the associated charities will 
welcome his assistance; if he cannot give this, such 
material aid as he feels able to give will be administered 
carefully and effectively by the association. If all the 
money which is now given at the door or on the street 
to unknown applicants — money which is sometimes 
merely wasted, but which is more often actively harm- 
ful — were reserved by its givers for use in either their 
own or an agent's personal work, based on accurate 
knowledge of the needs of the person dealt with and 
having for its purpose his ultimate restoration to com- 
plete independence, the problem of securing sufficient 
aid for the poor would be well on its way to solution. 



BEGGARS AND IMPOSTORS 99 

It will be seen that all these different classes, tramps, 
wandering men and women, impostors and beggars, 
though differing widely from one another, have one 
common characteristic. They all appeal for aid of one 
kind or another to persons who know nothing about 
them, and whose action, if they respond at once, must 
inevitably be taken very much at random. Each appli- 
cant may have a very real need of assistance, but the 
necessary preliminary to any genuine aid is to find out 
his actual situation and how he may be most effectively 
helped. This knowledge of the circumstances can 
usually be obtained only through the concurrent action 
of several agencies, while the formation and execution 
of an adequate plan of assistance may require not only 
the constructive skill of a trained worker, but a knowl- 
edge of all the sources of relief, both within and without 
that particular locality, which might fit this special case, 
and the time, the ability and the willingness to set these 
all in motion, to guide their action, and to be ready at 
any instant to modify them, cutting off, adding to, or 
changing the nature of their help, as the changing needs 
of the applicant may demand. 

From all these considerations it is apparent why pro- 
fessional workers among the poor discourage giving 
money in response to appeals from strangers. It is not 
that the person appealed to gives too much; he gives 
unwisely, and defeats the very end his gift is meant to 
secure. The only way in which he can help unknown 
applicants is by learning how to bring them into touch 
with the organized charitable forces of his place, mak- 
ing his gifts through these, or doing his personal work 
in consultation with them. It is not likely that the 
casual passer-by to whom an appeal for help is made will 



10 o HOW TO HELP 

have the time, the means and the knowledge which will 
enable him to respond adequately; but it is entirely pos- 
sible for him, foreseeing the likelihood of such appeals, 
to give a little time to finding out what are the resources 
of his own town or city for dealing with such appli- 
cants, and how he can bring them into touch with the 
proper agencies for giving aid. 

Whoever possesses himself of this knowledge and 
then follows up the stories of the applicants whom he 
thus tries to help, will have many disappointments, but 
he will have encouragements also. Many, perhaps most, 
of his applicants will refuse the help offered, and if 
restrained from preying on the public, will take the first 
opportunity of escaping to some other community where 
they may carry on their predatory careers without inter- 
ference. But he will find others who have longed vainly 
for just the opportunity which such treatment gives 
them, and who, receiving it, will rise permanently to a 
better condition. Miss Witherspoon, secretary of the 
Worcester Associated Charities, gives an instance which 
illustrates both the continuous assistance which may be 
necessary in some such cases, and the good results which 
may follow really helpful treatment: 

"He was selling shoestrings," she says, "on the cor- 
ner, a cripple with both feet gone, but his face attracted 
attention and interest. He gave his address readily and, 
when the secretary of the Associated Charities called, 
introduced his wife and child. 

"The investigation revealed several things : first, that 
there was immediate need; second, that there were no 
natural resources from which aid could be obtained; 
third, that he must be helped to obtain other employment 
than the precarious peddling, which was practically but 
little better than begging; and fourth and best of all, it 



BEGGARS AND IMPOSTORS IO i 

was evident that in spite of the need, the family were 
not beggars. 

"How each step toward reconstruction was taken 
would make too long a story. Briefly, it was something 
like this: a wheel-chair of which there was no further 
need was sold, and with the proceeds the rent of the 
damp, rear tenement in which they were living was paid. 
A visitor was interested who said, 'The man must have 
artificial feet, and a chance with other men. Moreover, 
I will collect the money.' Then the man said an astound- 
ing thing: Two good artificial feet will cost one hun- 
dred and fifty dollars. Give me thirty dollars, and I will 
make them myself, and have the tools to work with 
afterwards.' The money was given the man to try his 
experiment, and he succeeded. The first time he tried to 
walk on his new feet, he came straight to the office of 
the Associated Charities to see if the secretary would 
know him. While working on his feet, he had also been 
selling shoestrings, making enough to supply actual 
needs. Without any question he was making an honest 
attempt to carry on a legitimate business, and felt 
humiliated when money was given him outright. But 
once on his feet, there was never one day of going back 
to his old corner on his knees. 

"Then began the struggle for self-support as a nor- 
mal man in competition with other men. Work was 
obtained for him in a factory, and was bravely under- 
taken, but standing all day at a bench proved too hard. 
Discouraging days followed in which I fear there was 
not always enough to eat. The wife worked all she 
could, sewing, washing even, although a frail woman. 
But with a little help here and there, a loan occasionally, 
always repaid, charity sewing when regular sewing 
failed, aid a few times when absolutely necessary, and 
finally the difficulties were cleared away. 

"Today the man is walking about like other men, 
without even a cane. He has his own little repair shop 
and a comfortable home. Better still, he and his wife 



102 HOW TO HELP 

have made many personal friends who will stand by in 
an emergency." 1 

Comment on such a story seems hardly needed. A 
certain proportion of the people who passed by the crip- 
pled seller of shoestrings bought from him, probably 
telling him to keep the change. A certain other pro- 
portion thought to themselves that such beggars ought to 
be kept off the streets, and went their way. Another 
proportion really did not perceive him, merely accepting 
him as part of the street surroundings. One man 
brought him to the attention of the Associated Charities, 
where he found friends and resources to give him the 
chance he needed. Which now of these three, thinkest 
thou, was neighbor unto him that fell by the way? 

'Charities, Vol. XIV, p. 740. 



CHAPTER X 

CARE OF NEEDY FAMILIES IN THEIR HOMES! FIRST STEPS 

Although the homeless man is the applicant most 
generally in evidence, the family is the unit with which 
would-be helpers are most likely to find themselves deal- 
ing. Work among families presents a task of difficulty, 
of responsibility, but also of opportunity and hopeful- 
ness. An untrained worker should never undertake it 
unaided if it is possible to secure expert advice. Here, 
as elsewhere, experience is of inestimable value in teach- 
ing what to do and what to leave undone, when to see 
and when to be blind, when to encourage and when to 
rebuke, when to give freely and when to withhold 
sternly. If a community maintains any organized cen- 
tral charitable body, it is always possible to obtain from 
its agents and officers expert counsel as to the treat- 
ment of different cases of need, and, if necessary, these 
agents will help the beginner to carry out the plans 
decided upon after consultation. If there is no such 
central body, the best plan is to find some worker of long 
experience in relief-giving, and to act in consultation 
with him. Such workers can usually be found by con- 
sulting the city directory for a list of the relief-giving 
societies, and then applying to the officers of these, 
also given in the directory, for advice. 

At times, however, and in some places, it is impossible 
to consult anyone who has had the benefit of training 
and experience, yet the need for action arises. What is 
the untrained worker to do then? Certainly no one 
would advise turning away, refusing a possible oppor- 

103 



104 HOW TO HELP 

tunity of helpfulness because it carries with it an 
attendant possibility of harmfulness. What ought to be 
done for a given family will vary infinitely according to 
circumstances, but all action should be based on a few 
fundamental principles, and by bearing these in mind the 
danger of doing harm rather than good is reduced to a 
minimum. 

First comes the question of investigation, which has 
already been treated in an earlier chapter. It is so 
important, however, that it needs re-emphasizing. It 
cannot be too often repeated that investigation does not 
mean going to an applicant's house, looking at the 
appearance it presents, and asking a few questions of the 
applicant, or the neighbors, or the landlord, or the cor- 
ner grocer. Yet this is what inexperienced workers are 
apt to do, and thereafter to feel certain they understand 
the situation; "they have been to the house and made a 
personal investigation; what more could anyone do?" 
The old adage concerning the moral quality of appear- 
ances is nowhere more applicable than in work among 
the poor, and the harm done by this sort of investigation 
is occasionally so serious that it may be worth while to 
give an illustration at some length. 

Mrs. Billings was a widow with two children, eleven 
and nine years old. She had a long and discreditable 
history. She was known to drink and there was consid- 
erable evidence of worse practices. She was a confirmed 
and skilful beggar, and had been helped and given up in 
turn by most of the leading charitable societies of her 
city, which fact may have had some connection with 
her downward course. The only good point about her 
was her affection for her children. It is true that this 
affection did not prevent her from training them in 



CARE OF NEEDY FAMILIES 105 

deceit and beggary, but she took good care of them 
according to her ideas, and not only refused absolutely 
to consider giving them up, but kept herself within such 
limits that the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Chil- 
dren had not sufficient ground for taking them forcibly. 
This love for her children interested a kindly woman 
who came into accidental contact with Mrs. Billings, and 
who, concluding that this was something on which to 
build, decided to make a vigorous effort to induce her 
to give up drinking, to become self-supporting, and to 
make a home which would give her children a fair start 
in life. 

With this end in view, rather elaborate preparations 
were made. Mrs. Billings, who was at that time in even 
more need than usual, consented without much enthu- 
siasm to take work if it could be found, and to try to 
build up a home. The friendly visitor and the agent of 
the chief society interested visited the representatives of 
the other societies working in that district, and obtained 
from them a promise that if they received an application 
for aid from Mrs. Billings, they would consult the 
friendly visitor before taking action. The churches and 
the overseer of the poor also promised this cooperation. 
Work was procured for Mrs. Billings, the children were 
started in school, and sufficient help given to make up 
the temporary deficiencies in the family income. 

Then began a long and trying series of evasions on 
the part of Mrs. Billings. She was ill, or the children 
were ill, or the clock had stopped, or she had forgotten 
the hour at which to come, or for any one of a dozen 
other reasons she did not appear in time to do her work, 
yet put in unceasing pleas that additional help should 
be given her without the formality of finding out 



106 HOW TO HELP 

whether she needed it or what she did with it. Finally, 
she formally refused to work, declaring she was too ill 
to do anything. A doctor was secured, who, after a 
careful examination, reported that nothing was the mat- 
ter, but Mrs. Billings persisted that she could not and 
would not work. The visitor felt that the time for 
decisive action had come, and she explained to Mrs. 
Billings that work was waiting for her as soon as she 
would take it, but that unless she would take it, no help 
would be forthcoming. Further, if Mrs. Billings chose 
to go hungry herself rather than to work, no one could 
prevent her, but if she let the children suffer the Society 
for Prevention of Cruelty to Children would certainly 
interfere and place the little ones where they would not 
have to bear the penalty of their mother's shortcom- 
ings. Then the visitor retired and awaited results. 

The first development was exactly what had been 
expected : every charitable society in the neighborhood 
received an urgent appeal for aid from Mrs. Billings, 
who, suppressing the fact of the help ready if she would 
consent to the conditions imposed, represented herself 
as ill, unable to work and suffering. The societies stood 
by their compact and did not help. 

So far the plan had worked as expected, but here it 
suddenly failed. Mrs. Billings did not submit, neither 
did she starve. Her rooms lost their temporary appear- 
ance of cheerfulness, but she did not want for food, and 
there was no reason for claiming that the children were 
suffering, except from those moral lacks which society 
does not recognize as ground for action. Evidently, 
help was coming from somewhere, but where? The 
visitor was wholly unable either to learn or to make any 
further impression upon Mrs. Billings, and she found it 



CARE OF NEEDY FAMILIES 107 

rather a relief when the latter suddenly flitted between 
two suns, leaving no trace of her v whereabouts. 

A few months afterward, visiting a friend in another 
part of the city, the visitor was told of some work the 
friend's church had been doing among the poor, and 
especially of one very pitiful case: two little children 
had come to Sunday School — such nice children, but 
very poorly dressed — and on visiting their home the 
ladies of the church had found their mother was a widow, 
too ill to work, and absolutely destitute. A little com- 
parison of names and dates proved that the visitor's sud- 
den suspicion was true, and she understood what had 
interfered with her plan for Mrs. Billings' benefit. The 
church had taken up the case as one of urgent distress, 
and without really understanding the situation, had 
given relief, not wisely, but in sufficient amounts to 
block the plan for the family's redemption. Had the 
church's help been adequate, it would have made little 
difference from what source it came, but unfortunately 
the good ladies who thus stepped in had not substituted 
any equivalent for the careful plan which they unwit- 
tingly ruined; they had merely given relief freely for a 
while, and then, when the children stopped coming to 
Sunday School, had neglected and lost sight of the 
family. . 

In this particular case the church people felt that they 
were acting with moderation and wisdom. They would 
have claimed that they had not given help on the spur 
of the moment, but had waited to investigate the situa- 
tion. They had themselves been to the house and had 
seen the mother in bed and every evidence of want 
around. The trouble was that they were satisfied with 
this entirely insufficient examination into the circum- 



108 HOW TO HELP 

stances. They made no effort to find out whether any- 
one else was interested, or might become so. They did 
not try to learn whether Mrs. Billings was merely in 
need of food and clothing, or whether her need went 
much deeper, and demanded patient, constructive treat- 
ment. They did not attempt anything beyond removing 
the outward symptoms of want, and in doing this 
they rendered nugatory a carefully thought out plan 
undertaken by one with the means, the interest and the 
perseverance to carry it through — a plan which might, 
but for their well-meant interference, have restored Mrs. 
Billings to a fairly self-respecting condition and secured 
for the children a reasonably good start in life. 

It is not always or even often that an insufficient 
investigation results in such evident harm as this, but 
the damage, though less apparent, is frequently no less 
serious. It is impossible to emphasize too strongly the 
need for a careful and thorough enquiry into the circum- 
stances of any given applicant before undertaking to 
help. 

There is only one objection with even an appearance 
of validity which can be brought against this course, 
and that is the familiar argument that such an investiga- 
tion requires time, and "people starve to death while 
you are finding out whether they ought to have help." 
The strength of this argument is more apparent than 
real. As a matter of fact the poor are seldom wholly 
destitute, nor absolutely dependent on strangers for the 
help necessary to save them from suffering. They are 
frequently under-nourished, but seldom starved. "In 
the last five years," says one professional worker, "I 
have been brought into contact with hundreds of cases 
of distress, and yet I could almost count on my fingers 



CARE OF NEEDY FAMILIES 109 

those in which I found it really necessary to go out at 
once and get food or fuel. And in every one of those 
cases in which it was really necessary to do this, the 
sufferers were strangers in the place, who had neither 
friends nor acquaintances within reaching distance." 

Most professional workers would admit having found 
a larger number than this in which immediate relief was 
required, but ordinarily the applicant does not wait until 
need is urgent before trying to secure some safeguard 
against it. When, however, a case is found in which 
this is not so, in which there is evident need of relief at 
once, the natural and proper course is to give such 
emergency help as may be required, pending further 
investigation. In the instance cited above, for example, 
no one could have criticized the church people had they 
provided Mrs. Billings with food and fuel sufficient to 
last for a week, and then during that week prosecuted 
their investigation and made themselves really familiar 
with the situation. The harm is done when the untrained 
worker takes it for granted that an investigation is 
finished when destitution has been seen, and concludes 
that the evident want which justifies giving emergency 
relief to cover the time demanded for a full investigation, 
equally justifies giving continuous relief without any 
effort to penetrate deeper into the causes which have 
led to this distress. 

Grant, however, that a full and accurate investigation, 
or at least as careful a one as' the conditions permit, has 
been made. The next steps in order are, first, to obtain 
relief for the immediate want, and second, to establish 
such friendly relations as will enable the worker to be of 
service in preventing the necessity for future appeals for 



HO HOW TO HELP 

aid, or, in other words, in removing the underlying 
causes of the present difficulty. 

In passing it may be said that there are two kinds 
of families which it is unwise for anyone but a trained 
worker to attempt to aid in their homes. If the inves- 
tigation has shown that the family under consideration 
is actively vicious, if the home surroundings are abso- 
lutely immoral, and the training of the children is all in 
the wrong direction, the authorities should be called 
upon to break up the home and place the little ones in a 
better environment. Or if the family proves to be one 
of the almost hopelessly degenerate kind, with a long 
record of beggary and shiftlessness and perhaps intem- 
perance and tramping, if no experienced workers are at 
hand to advise, it will usually be found best to refer the 
case to the public relief authorities, who will probably 
be already acquainted with the family characteristics. 
Neither kind of family is, of course, really hopeless, but 
both present extremely difficult problems, and untrained 
efforts for their benefit are apt to result in discourage- 
ment for the worker, and negative if not absolutely 
harmful effects upon the applicants. 

Such cases are happily exceptional, and supposing that 
the family under consideration belongs to neither of 
these classes, the question next arises how to secure the 
aid needed. The investigation will have thrown some 
light on this. It may have shown that no material help 
is needed, but merely some intelligent planning or some 
utilization of available resources within or without the 
immediate circle of the applicant. If, however, help 
must be given, the investigation should also have shown 
whether this can be obtained from friends, relatives, the 
applicant's church, or some other source close at hand. 



CARE OF NEEDY FAMILIES m 

If there is no such natural channel of relief, there remain 
the public relief authorities, the large relief-giving 
societies, and the whole network of small charitable 
circles and associations. To which of these application 
should be made depends considerably upon the family 
itself. 

One important principle in all work among the poor 
is to maintain their self-respect uninjured, to strengthen 
it when weak, and to restore it when lacking. Bearing 
this in mind it will usually be found inadvisable, in 
cases in which the family is unused to asking aid, to 
apply to the public relief authorities as distinguished 
from the private relief-giving societies. Rightly or 
wrongly a certain stigma is apt to rest on those who 
receive public assistance. Their neighbors look upon 
them as paupers, "town's poor," or at the best as dis- 
creditably poverty-stricken. Rather contradictorily, 
among the less respectable poor exists the feeling that 
public relief is a right which one may demand without 
shame, and the man or woman who loses the first 
shrinking from such an application and learns to go 
without hesitation to the public relief authorities, has 
taken a long step toward adopting the attitude of the 
confirmed applicant. Of course, if the family is accus- 
tomed to being helped from this source, the objection 
does not exist so strongly, and it then becomes a ques- 
tion whether the difficulty of getting help from other 
sources is so great as to outweigh the desirability of 
creating a reluctance to be on the public lists. The 
amount of help which can be secured from private socie- 
ties and the conditions under which it is given will have 
much to do with the answer to this question. 

If there is an able-bodied man or woman in the family 



112 HOW TO HELP 

it is desirable that the help needed should be given in 
return for work. In most of the larger places it will be 
found that there are woodyards for men and work- 
rooms for women, where unskilled workers may be 
given employment of varying length, for which they 
will be paid a fair price. Ordinarily one can purchase 
tickets entitling the holder to so many hours' work, and 
can give these tickets at discretion to the applicant for 
whom one wishes employment. If the giver is really 
interested in the family, it is well to learn whether these 
tickets are presented, and by whom. In one of our large 
cities a few years ago, it was found that certain appli- 
cants were doing a good business in work tickets. Their 
plan was to apply to everyone who was likely to have 
these tickets with a tale of a pressing need for work. 
By this method tickets were frequently secured which 
the recipient would sell at a discount to some more 
industrious acquaintance, whose need was so great that 
in return for a ticket entitling him to a dollar's worth of 
work, he would agree to surrender one-half of his antici- 
pated wages. 

In a community where woodyards and workrooms do 
not exist, it is frequently possible to make some work 
about one's own house, or to find friends and neighbors 
who are in need of someone to do washing or cleaning 
or odd jobs. When providing work in this manner, 
however, care should be taken that the work is really 
well done, and that the rate of payment is fair to both 
sides. Injury is sometimes done by over-paying casual 
workers through compassion. If the worker realizes 
that this is being done, the tendency is for him to look 
upon his employment as a mere pretext, which might as 
well be omitted, and which may certainly be slighted. If 



CARE OF NEEDY FAMILIES 113 

he does not realize the over-payment, he is apt to gain 
an unduly high idea of his value as a worker, which 
will result badly for him when he is employed in com- 
petitive industry. 

In some cases, however, it will be found impossible to 
secure enough work to relieve the pressing needs of the 
family, and in others it will be found that there is no 
member capable of undertaking such work. Relief, 
direct and undisguised, must then be sought. It is fre- 
quently difficult to secure adequate help. Sometimes it 
will be found that relief societies have a curious idea 
that there is some saving virtue in giving insufficiently. 
One professional worker tells of a leader of a church 
circle who called to ask advice concerning a family in 
whom the circle were interested. The circumstances were 
sufficiently distressing. There were seven children, all 
surprisingly young. There was a much occupied mother, 
and a grandmother too aged and infirm to be helpful. 
The father was an honest, steady man, whose health was 
weak, and who, on this account, was from time to time 
forced to stop work altogether. Such was the case at 
that particular time, and with a family numbering ten 
and no income, it must be admitted that the circle was 
justified in thinking the situation a difficult one. 

"What have you been doing for them so far?" was 
naturally the agent's first question. 

"Well," responded the leader, seriously, "you see, they 
are such a nice, respectable family we didn't want to 
pauperize them, so we have been sending a pint of milk 
a day for the baby." 

This was an extreme case, but in a less degree the 
same thing is observable among many workers. Our 
relief societies too often allow entirely insufficient help. 



ii 4 



HOW TO HELP 



Instead of adapting their aid to the individual case, giv- 
ing what is needed as long as it is needed, they have 
some stated amount of relief doled out to all alike. "But 
if we gave more to one, we should have to refuse to help 
others altogether," is their usual answer to any remon- 
strance. It is now a pretty generally accepted principle 
that it is better to help a few adequately than to give 
scantily to many. The help thus given is likely to pro- 
duce far better results, physically, morally and econom- 
ically. 

Private workers, however, must submit to the rules 
of the societies through which they obtain relief, and 
except in the fortunate cases where they are able them- 
selves to make up any deficiencies, will often find it 
necessary to put up with far too little help for a given 
family. The difficulty can sometimes be overcome by 
inducing several societies to help at the same time, but 
the different societies will not always agree to this. 
Here as elsewhere, it is frequently necessary to do not 
the best thing, but the best thing one can, and to per- 
mit, reluctantly, the existence of a considerable diver- 
gence between one's ideal and one's practice. It is well, 
nevertheless, to keep the ideal in mind, and to refuse 
absolutely to feel that a certain family have "had enough 
done for them" because they have received a dollar 
order of groceries for a few weeks, or had half a ton of 
coal sent them monthly during the winter. 

So far it has been taken for granted that the tempo- 
rary help needed was only food and fuel. These are the 
most general wants, but they are frequently complicated 
with other needs. Illness is perhaps the most common. 
In every city and town the authorities make some pro- 
vision for the sick poor, to which all are entitled who 



CARE OF NEEDY FAMILIES 115 

cannot secure other care. It frequently happens, how- 
ever, that the public physician, besides being a very busy 
man, is somewhat hardened by his daily contact with 
the lowest of the poor. If any private society furnishes 
medical care, or if any doctor is willing to take the case 
as an act of charity, the patient is likely to receive more 
personal attention. This does not apply to patients suf- 
fering from contagious disease, who ordinarily come 
under the care of the Board of Health, rather than of 
the Poor Department. 

In many places a visiting nurse is maintained by 
private societies, who will call once or twice a day to 
care for an invalid. This often renders it possible to 
keep a patient at home rather than to send him to a 
hospital. Often it will be found that there are societies 
for the purpose of supplying invalids with nourishing 
food, for securing aid in nursing where a visiting nurse 
is not maintained, for furnishing fresh-air outings for 
convalescents, and so on. The means of caring for poor 
patients vary widely from place to place, and those who 
are undertaking relief work systematically should make 
some study of the special resources of their own city. 

Another common form of want arises from unpaid 
rent. Again and again appeals for help are made on 
the ground that the rent is overdue and that the land- 
lord is about to turn the family out. In view of the fre- 
quency of this form of distress, it is well to be fortified 
with some knowledge of the laws concerning evictions. 
In some states the tenant has few rights, in others the 
landlord is put to much expense and trouble to get rid 
of an undesirable renter. In some places it is practic- 
ally impossible for a landlord to eject a tenant who is 
ill in bed. In most cases he will not care to do so if the 



IIS HOW TO HELP 

facts are laid before him. Ordinarily it may be taken 
for granted that landlords are reasonable beings, not 
anxious to distress their tenants unduly, and if an evic- 
tion at a given time will cause great hardship, it is well 
to go directly to the owner or agent and lay the situa- 
tion before him; the chances are very good that he will 
grant a delay until the special cause of difficulty can 
be removed. 

If an eviction proves inevitable, it is unwise for the 
visitor to undertake the task of finding another tene- 
ment for the family. Of course, emergencies may occur 
when the visitor simply must undertake the quest, but 
as a general rule, the man or woman of the family can 
attend to this better than an outsider can. Also, they 
can usually make better terms than a visitor can for con- 
veying their goods. Here, as in other instances, unless 
the family are well known to the visitor, it is better not 
to give them the money, but to make the necessary pay- 
ments one's self, if giving seems necessary. Let the 
applicant made the bargain, subject, of course, to the 
visitor's approval, and let the latter carry out its con- 
ditions. If it seems impossible or for any reason unwise 
to give the money needed for securing and moving into 
a new tenement, it will generally be found that some 
friend or connection will give the family shelter for a 
few days, thus allowing time to make sure of the real cir- 
cumstances and to provide some means of effective relief. 

Still another frequent trouble arises in connection 
with chattel mortgages. Again and again a self-respect- 
ing family, finding it necessary to secure money for 
some unusual expense caused perhaps by illness or by a 
period of slack work, and seeing no other way of rais- 
ing it, resort to a loan company and give in exchange 



CARE OF NEEDY FAMILIES 117 

for a loan a note secured by mortgage on their furni- 
ture. According to the character of the company mak- 
ing the loan this may be a perfectly legitimate business 
transaction, or it may be the cloak for outrageous impo- 
sition. Often the rates of interest charged are excessive. 
Five per cent, a month is common; ten per cent, 
monthly is not unusual; and even higher rates are 
charged. The interest is almost always compounded 
monthly, so that if for any reason the borrower is not 
able to pay it each month the face of his debt increases 
at an alarming rate. Probably there is not a profes- 
sional worker among the poor but could tell instances 
of people who have secured loans in this way, and who, 
being unable to do more than meet the interest, in the 
course of a few years pay double or quadruple the 
amount they obtained and are yet liable for the whole 
sum originally borrowed. The mortgage is usually so 
drawn that the lender is authorized to seize the bor- 
rower's goods without formality of any kind if his 
interest is not promptly met, so that after having repaid 
far more than he ever got, the victim may yet be legally 
despoiled of all his household possessions without 
chance of redress. 

When a case of imposition of this kind is discovered, 
it is desirable to consult a lawyer before attempting any 
plan of action. The laws concerning such mortgages vary 
from state to state. In some there is practically no 
limit to the interest which may be extorted, or to the. 
indirect impositions in the way of charges for making- 
out papers, etc. In others these matters are strictly- 
regulated, and if the lender has overstepped the law his 
punishment may be easily secured. As a rule, however, 
he will have taken care to have the law on his side, and 



Il8 HOW TO HELP 

his extortions, while unjustifiable, will be found strictly 
legal. 

Under the best of circumstances, when the lender is 
fair as well as law-abiding in his dealings, such a mort- 
gage is an expensive way of raising money. The lenders 
must make their loans in small amounts, involving 
elaborate bookkeeping, and often to people who have 
no intention of dealing honestly, so that losses are fre- 
quent. For these reasons, interest must be much larger 
than in ordinary business transactions. Whenever, 
therefore, a really honest and trustworthy family is 
found struggling under one of these encumbrances, it 
is advisable to strive to pay off the mortgage, lending 
the money for this purpose at a moderate rate. In cases 
where it is not advisable to do this, it may be possible 
to secure the transfer of the mortgage from a company 
charging extortionate interest to one having fairer 
rates. In some cases it may be desirable to give out- 
right whatever is needed to clear off the mortgage. 
When this seems best, it is well to entrust the negotia- 
tions to some lawyer or business man, if his good offices 
can be secured. If the lender is inclined to be fair and 
reasonable he will often, if he has already received the 
full amount of his loan in interest, be willing to close 
the affair on the receipt of a portion of the face value 
of the note; if he has been charging extortionate rates 
and approaching as nearly as he dares to the limit of the 
laws, he may be willing to compromise rather than to 
let the case become conspicuous. In either case the 
appearance in the matter of some reliable and disinter- 
ested third party is likely to rouse his interest, and dis- 
pose him to make more liberal terms than he would be 
apt to offer the borrower. 



CARE OF NEEDY FAMILIES 



II 9 



Innumerable other forms of distress will offer them- 
selves for assistance, but for them all the initial steps 
must be something the same : a careful investigation, 
followed by help sufficient to relieve the present want, 
which in turn should be accompanied and succeeded by 
a careful and faithful effort to restore the family to a 
condition of independence. 



CHAPTER XI 

CARE OF NEEDY FAMILIES IN THEIR HOMES: FINDING 

WORK 

After the immediate need of a family has been 
relieved comes the more difficult problem of securing 
such assistance as shall preclude the necessity for 
another application for help. If the family group con- 
tains a sufficient number of possible wage earners to 
support it comfortably, and the present distress is due 
to the fact that some of these are out of work, the 
natural thing is to secure employment for them. A 
worker with a trade at which he is fairly proficient can 
usually manage this himself, though sometimes it may 
be desirable for the visitor to try to interest some 
employer of that particular kind of labor. In cases 
where the worker has lost his place through intemper- 
ance or misconduct, if the visitor has reason to believe 
that he will do better in the future, another chance may 
often be secured for him by a personal interview with 
the last employer. If, however, the worker is one of 
the many inefficient or only half competent men who are 
found in every kind of occupation, it is apt to be impos- 
sible for him to get work at his trade during a dull sea- 
son, and employment must be sought elsewhere. 

It is probably an underestimate to say that in at least 
seven out of ten cases in which distress is due to lack 
of employment, the unemployed worker will be found 
to belong to the partially unfit class. He may be unfit- 
ted by laziness, by intemperance or by vicious habits, 

120 



CARE OF NEEDY FAMILIES 121 

but far more often it will be found that without any- 
assignable fault on his part he is not quite up to the 
standard required for success in the field of competi- 
tive industry. He may be honest, sober and industrious, 
but a little dull mentally, or slow in mind or body. He 
may not have the physical strength to vie with some 
others of his trade. He may have been only half 
trained ; he may be able only to act under constant direc- 
tion, waiting helplessly for someone to tell him what to 
do if left to himself; he may be inefficient or incompe- 
tent; in a dozen different ways, none of them involving 
vice or wrong-doing, he may be an undesirable em- 
ployee. 

Men of this class constitute one of the sorest per- 
plexities to philanthropic workers, and alas ! often to 
their friends also. Every employer knows the type, and 
groans when some charitable visitor comes to beg that 
he will take such a man. "The late Colonel Waring was 
once asked what was the greatest official burden he had 
to bear. His reply was prompt and energetic: 'The 
philanthropists who want me to give jobs to men no 
one else will employ.' " 

Nevertheless, it not infrequently happens that men 
who have thus proved themselves failures in one place, 
may be fairly successful in another, and in any case an 
effort must be made to get them work, and to help them 
keep it. In a few places free State Employment 
Bureaus are maintained, through which the needed 
work may be secured. Where these do not exist, there 
may be free bureaus supported by private philanthropy. 
The Young Men's Christian Association frequently has 
such an office in connection with its other work. At 
such bureaus, even if they are not successful in finding 



122 HOW TO HELP 

the work wanted, they may give the visitor useful hints 
as to methods of procedure. Where no free employ- 
ment bureau is maintained, it is well to make some study 
of the regular agencies. Frequently it is possible to 
arrange with one of these that applicants sent by the 
visitor shall be allowed to register and make use of the 
privileges of the agency without any charge, the visitor 
promising to become responsible for the payment of the 
fee in case a position is secured. 

While making use of these means the visitor will find 
it well to enquire for possible openings among friends 
and acquaintances. If one has any personal acquaint- 
ance with employers of large numbers of workers, it is 
usually easy to find a chance for one more. In the 
larger establishments employing from five hundred to 
several thousand employees, there is a certain amount 
of change constantly going on, especially among the 
unskilled laborers. New men are taken on almost daily, 
of whom little is known, and whether or not a given 
man is taken may depend entirely upon whether anyone 
has brought him to the special attention of the employer. 
Of course, his ability to hold the place thus secured is 
another question, but a word in the right quarter will 
often give him the opportunity to prove himself. 

One precaution is necessary in this matter. The visi- 
tor should be very sure that work for one man is not 
secured at the cost of the dismissal of another. To 
oblige a friend or a customer, an employer will some- 
times discharge a perfectly satisfactory employee to 
give his place to another who has no claim but the 
urgent recommendation of someone philanthropically 
interested in him. The injustice and hardship of this 
are evident. 



CARE OF NEEDY FAMILIES 



123 



While the search for steady employment is going on, 
it may be possible to obtain irregular work for the man 
at some odd job trade. In most cities there are to be 
found distributing agencies, from which are sent out 
advertising matter and circulars of all sorts. These 
agencies employ groups of men to canvass the city, put- 
ting handbills under every door or in each letter box, 
or otherwise seeing that they reach the largest possible 
number. The work is heavy and usually ill paid; there- 
fore no man keeps it longer than he can help, and vacan- 
cies in the working force are constantly occurring. In 
winter, ice-cutting affords opportunities for unoccupied 
laborers in most northern places. Nearly every city has 
some characteristic occupations, requiring little training 
or skill, so poorly paid that they cannot hold workers 
long at a time, but offering a temporary resource for 
those out of work. Here, as in other cases, the more 
one knows about one's own place, the more helpful one 
can be. 

The whole matter of rinding work is a difficult and 
unsatisfactory one. The conditions of modern industry 
demand a massing together of laborers for whom there 
is not sufficient continuous employment. Many of our 
large industries are seasonal, and those who follow them 
are necessarily out of work much of the time. Others 
have a season of feverish activity, in which every 
worker who can be procured is strained to the utmost, 
followed by a long dull period, when only the most 
capable and efficient employees are retained. In some of 
the textile industries the workers retained during the 
dull season are required to be in the mills as steadily as 
if they were fully employed, though they may receive 
less than half a day's work with a corresponding 



124 HOW TO HELP 

diminution of income. They are paid only for what 
they do, but they are expected to be on hand ready to 
do it whenever it comes. These fluctuations of industry 
are not so disastrous in the better paid industries, as, for 
instance, the building trade, in which during the busy 
season the worker can lay by enough to carry him over 
the slack time, but among the great mass of unskilled 
laborers their effects are terribly serious. The visitor 
cannot hope to correct these ills; they present some of 
the most complex problems of our modern industrial 
system: all that can be done directly is to alleviate their 
effects in individual instances. 

If the man of the family is unemployed, and work can- 
not be found for him, should it be sought for the 
woman? As a rule it will be. The difficulty of secur- 
ing adequate relief is so great that ordinarily resort will 
be had to every means of diminishing the amount 
required. Nevertheless, it is a serious question whether, 
in families where there is an unemployed and able- 
bodied man, work ought to be given to the woman. 
Theoretically, when it is done the husband will be mor- 
tified at his inability to support his family, and will 
redouble his efforts to find employment for himself. Prac- 
tically, it does not always work that way. Sometimes 
the man settles down contentedly to take his wife's 
place in the home, looking after the children, preparing 
the meals and keeping house, after a fashion, in her 
absence. Occasionally he develops a real domestic 
talent, and the roles of the two partners are simply 
exchanged, she becoming the breadwinner and he the 
home-maker — a result of questionable desirability. More 
often, the man does not take kindly to household duties, 
and the wife has to assume a double burden, while the 



CARE OF NEEDY FAMILIES 125 

husband's sense of responsibility for his family is steadily 
weakened. 

This is no mere academic discussion, but a problem 
which is sure to present itself sooner or later to every- 
one who undertakes any practical charitable work. It 
is easier to find a limited amount of unskilled work for 
women than for men, so that frequently one of the first 
steps taken by the charitable helpers of a distressed 
family is to send the woman out of her home, and to 
teach the husband that if he cannot or does not provide 
for his children, his wife can and will. His failure to 
find work may be wholly involuntary, but it is danger- 
ously probable that the edge will be taken off his desire 
to do so by the knowledge that his wife can supply his 
deficiencies. If he is disposed to be idle or intemperate 
or of a wandering disposition, the direct result of giving 
work to the woman is to encourage these tendencies and 
to hasten the time when he may become either a steady 
burden on his family or that bete noir of the modern 
charity worker, the deserting husband. 

Sometimes this result has been achieved before the 
family comes under the visitor's notice, and the man is 
the chief factor in the problem. Such cases are dis- 
couraging, but not hopeless. The workers of the Bos- 
ton Associated Charities tell of one such case, which 
responded to rather heroic treatment. Mr. B had always 
been an intermittent worker, prone to a mysterious ail- 
ment which assailed him whenever his wife was able to 
support the family. She was a hard worker and had 
often done it, but now there were six children, the 
youngest only four months old, and their maintenance 
was beyond her ability. As Mr. B's ailment continued 
in unabated force, the family naturally began to apply 



126 HOW TO HELP 

to churches and relief societies. The agent of the Asso- 
ciated Charities was appealed to, and as usual sought to 
help the family back to self-support. This was not 
exactly what Mr. B, at least, wished for, and she soon 
had reason to suspect that help was being sought and 
received from other sources. After a conference with 
the others interested, it was decided that material relief 
should be refused altogether; assistance would be given 
in finding work, but if the man could not or would not 
support his family, he must lose them. Then began a 
time of almost as much trial to the agent and visitor as 
to the B's. "Notes came often to the office to say that 
the baby was starving, and the visitor's calls on the 
family were not cheered by their prophecies of being 
'put on the streets.' " But all concerned held faithfully 
to their agreement not to give aid, and the parents were 
assured that if they were evicted, the Chardon Street 
Home would give indoor relief, so that they would not 
suffer. To be sure, this would mean that the father, at 
least, would lose the children, a fact which was fully 
explained to him. But if the visitor might not give food 
and fuel, she was permitted to help in finding work, 
which she did by advertising for washings for the 
woman. The results were surprising. Work came in 
till Mrs. B reported with pardonable pride that she had 
fifteen washings, and, in her own phrase, was "making 
a Chinaman of Mr. B," who, if he could not go out and 
get a job, could certainly help in her work. Under 
these circumstances, Mr. B appears to have concluded 
that he might as well yield to the inevitable with a good 
grace, and work, if work he really must, at something 
better suited to the occidental male than washing. 
"The final result is that the man has been working for 



CARE OF NEEDY FAMILIES 127 

$10.00 a week for three months; the family has moved 
to a good tenement, owned by his employer, and this 
fact, added to the scare he has had about losing his 
family, makes it hopeful that the job may be perma- 
nent." 

It is not always that a man who has become accus- 
tomed to look upon his wife as the wage-earner of the 
family, can be reached by such treatment; sometimes its 
only effect would be to drive him away, leaving the 
family to get on as best it may without him. This at 
least eliminates the question of his support, so that the 
experiment is worth trying; but plainly it is desirable 
to avoid whatever may reduce the husband to this con- 
dition of willing dependence, and to treat him, from the 
first, as the natural wage-earner, whose place cannot be 
filled, even temporarily, by the wife. 

Professor Patten has recently opposed with much 
vigor the idea that women at marriage should cease to 
be wage-earners. His position is, in the main, that when 
a married woman has a real ability in some direction, 
and has no special taste for household work, it is better 
for all concerned that she should follow out her inclina- 
tion, using her earnings in whole or in part to employ for 
her household duties someone whose special ability lies 
along that line. There is force in his contention, but it 
does not apply to the cases which usually come under 
the charitable visitor's notice. In these there is gener- 
ally no question of indulging a strong taste. The ques- 
tion is whether the man shall continue to be the wage- 
earner, bringing home his wages for his wife to admin- 
ister, or whether the wife shall be forced to assume the 
double burden of breadwinner and home-maker, with 
the inevitable results of a neglected home, an insuffi- 



128 HOW TO HELP 

cient income, and, usually, an overworked and prema- 
turely broken-down woman. When the question is 
reduced to these terms few will be found to hesitate 
over the answer. 

Here, as in the matter of securing adequate relief, we 
shall often find a gap between our theory and our prac- 
tice. Nevertheless, it is always well to keep the ideal 
line of action in mind, and most experienced workers 
agree that this ideal demands that when a family in- 
cludes an able-bodied, unemployed man, work should 
be found for him, not for his wife. If the difficulties of 
finding employment for him are so great that the visitor 
feels it necessary to secure something for the wife to 
do, it should be recognized that this course is fraught 
with possibilities of danger to the future welfare of the 
family, and it should be followed with all attainable care 
and precaution. 

In this connection the question of making work often 
arises. If real work cannot be found, is it wise to set 
an able-bodied man or woman to some task invented 
for the sole purpose of giving them something to do that 
the help they need may come under the guise of wages 
rather than of alms? In the old days it was often felt 
strongly that work should be exacted, though this seems 
to have been advocated rather as a test, or, in some 
instances, apparently more with the deliberate intention 
of making the conditions of aid as unpleasant as pos- 
sible, than for the sake of fostering the applicant's self- 
respect. In some of the smaller communities the work 
demanded was often conspicuously humiliating. A log 
of wood was to be carried from one village to another 
and back again; a certain number of bricks must be 
piled in one place today, and tomorrow taken down and 



CARE OF NEEDY FAMILIES 129 

piled in another ; and so on, through a series of employ- 
ments manifestly artificial and useless. 

Naturally, when a broader conception of charity arose, 
it came to be felt that such practices were worse than 
useless, and a certain revulsion against any kind of 
"made" work was experienced. At present, the use or 
non-use of this form of assistance is largely determined 
by local conditions. The arguments in its favor are the 
desirability of having something in the nature of a work 
test to offer applicants, the possible educational value of 
the work required, and the conservation of the appli- 
cant's self-respect and the avoidance of any danger of 
fostering habits of dependence. The force of these 
arguments is apparent without discussion. The oppo- 
nents of such work base their objections upon the dan- 
ger of its interference with economic conditions, and 
the abuses to which the system is liable. 

Perhaps both these objections may best be considered 
in connection with some definite form of made work. 
Take, for instance, the form in which it most often 
appears — sewing for women. Churches and relief socie- 
ties, finding themselves unable to establish workrooms 
in which every grade of labor may be utilized, try to 
meet the needs- of poor and untrained women by furnish- 
ing them sewing for which no demand exists. The 
women are paid for their work, but what shall be done 
with their product? Sometimes the articles made are 
given to the maker, or they are sold to her at a low price, 
and her labor is taken in payment. Sometimes they are 
given to hospitals or other benevolent institutions. 
Sometimes they are offered for sale, and people are 
urged to buy for the sake of helping the work along. 
Obviously, if they are offered below the regular market 
Q 



I 3 HOW TO HELP 

price, there will be danger of injuring other workers 
whose wages are not made up from charitable contribu- 
tions. Regular dealers in such articles must put down 
their prices to meet those of the charitable association or 
lose their custom; in order to do this they must cut the 
wages of their employees ; and so the made work be- 
comes a direct and effective lever for lowering wages 
and reducing other workers to the need of charity. 
There is no question that serious harm has sometimes 
been done in this way. The harm, however, does not 
seem at all a necessary accompaniment of the system. If 
the managers offer their product at fair market prices 
the regular dealer is not interfered with, except in the 
way of legitimate competition, and there is no tendency 
to lower wages. So it is with every form of made work. 
If carelessly handled it may be a source of injury to all 
self-supporting workers in that line, but with the exer- 
cise of prudence and business fairness, there is no reason 
why it should work harm, and many why it should help. 
The second objection is due mainly to the lack of any 
standard of excellence to which the work done must 
necessarily conform. When articles are to be sold in the 
open market they must come up to a certain standard 
or purchasers will refuse them, and the knowledge of 
this acts as a stimulus to employer and employee alike. 
When, however, an enterprise is independent of the 
market value of its products, when it is supported mainly 
by contributions which will continue even though it 
never sells a pennyworth of its product, there is a con- 
stant temptation to the managers to relax their demands 
and rest satisfied with inferior work. The workers are 
quick to perceive this and in their turn become careless 
and indifferent ; they see that the work is a sham, and 



CARE OF NEEDY FAMILIES 



131 



that there is no connection between their efforts and 
their returns. It is only natural if, under such circum- 
stances, they do not try to do well, and thus the occu- 
pation which should train them for work elsewhere 
really makes them far less fit for outside employment 
than they were before. Of course, untrained workers 
cannot be expected to produce good results, but the 
managers who accept from them careless and slighted 
work are doing all in their power to harm them. 
Workers who are too untrained or too unintelligent to 
do ordinary tasks should be given something simple 
enough to meet their capacity, and their payment should 
be based on the pains taken, not on the mere fact of 
getting through an allotted amount or spending a certain 
period over the work. If these two precautions are 
observed, not to undersell the regular market, and not 
to allow workers to do their tasks carelessly or negli- 
gently, there seems no reason why made work should 
not be as useful to the employee as genuine work. It 
involves considerably more trouble to the one who fur- 
nishes it, but its effect on the worker is so much better 
than the mere giving of alms that the trouble is worth 
while. 

So far we have considered only the parents as pos- 
sible breadwinners. If, however, the family includes 
any children who are near working age, the visitor will 
probably be entreated to get work for them. Within a 
comparatively short time this would have been done as 
a matter of course, but fortunately the public attitude 
toward child labor is changing, and it is no longer taken 
for granted that failure or inability on the parents' part 
to support the family necessarily involves putting the 
children to work. Whether or not it is wise to try to 



I 3 2 HOW TO HELP 

secure employment for a given child must depend on 
such circumstances as the age and development, physical 
and mental, of the child, the cause of the family's pov- 
erty, the kind of work which can be secured, and a 
number of similar considerations. 

It may be accepted as a general principle, practically 
without exception, that a charitable worker should not 
ask for any child an exemption from the laws govern- 
ing child labor in that state. It may be well to set up a 
higher than the legal standard, but a lower one should 
never be accepted. Every step forward in the effort to 
protect children has been gained at exceeding cost. The 
forces anxious to exploit childhood are alert to detect 
any weakening of the barriers raised against them. No 
matter how great the hardship entailed in a given case 
by refusing to a child below the legal age permission to 
work, the good of childhood as a whole demands that 
the law should be preserved inviolate. The temptation 
to connive at its evasion, or to secure an exemption in 
states where this may be done, is very great at times, 
but no one has a right to take such action in the name 
of charity. Philanthropists have rather a bad name in 
regard to this matter. They appreciate so keenly the 
need of the family, they realize so fully the difficulty of 
securing sufficient continuous aid, that they are apt to 
lose sight of the principle involved. "Not a week 
passes," observed one employer, indignantly, "but some 
charitable woman comes begging me to take some child 
under age because its family needs its earnings so badly. 
Then hearings on child labor are held, and I go there 
and listen to denunciations of the employers' greed 
which leads to the exploitation of the labor of children." 

Frequently the question comes up of securing em- 



CARE OF NEEDY FAMILIES 133 

ployment for children outside of school hours. This 
may be an admirable or a particularly objectionable plan, 
according to circumstances. It may mean nothing more 
than a reestablishment of the old family conditions 
which still prevail in rural districts, where each child 
had his share of work, useful and educational, to per- 
form in addition to attending school, or it may mean an 
undue strain on the child with a long train of resultant 
evils. In each case it must be decided on its merits. 
Few people would approve of sending a child who has 
been in school all day into the mills or factories, to 
remain there until eight or nine in the evening. A 
course less apparently objectionable, but which may 
lead to even more serious results, is to start the children 
after school hours into some street trade, such as selling 
papers or blacking shoes or peddling matches or other 
small articles. There is strong evidence to show that the 
children suffer physically and morally from these street 
trades, that their financial returns are small, that the 
training and environment are damaging, and that the 
results of such employment are evil for the community 
and the children alike. 

Other kinds of occupation may be less objectionable, 
or even desirable. There is no reason why the child's 
activities should not be turned into useful channels, if 
proper precautions are observed. The trouble is that 
ordinarily such precautions are wholly neglected, and 
the immediate need is allowed to outweigh the consid- 
eration of the child's future. Three points should 
always be borne in mind. First, a child should never 
be put to work which is injurious morally, either in its 
own nature, or in the conditions and environment under 
which it must be carried on. This needs no discussion, 



134 



HOW TO HELP 



yet unfortunately it is by no means generally adopted. 
Second, it should not be permitted to take work which 
is physically harmful. On this point we have as yet far 
too little information. Some occupations, of course, are 
known to be dangerous to old and young alike, but set- 
ting these aside, we know but little about the effect of 
different kinds of work on a growing child. Studies of 
this subject are under way at present, but it will be some 
time before their results are available. Meanwhile, 
common sense indicates plainly enough that some em- 
ployments are entirely unsuitable for children. Night 
work is a severe strain for an adult, and for a child it 
should be absolutely out of the question. The dust- 
laden air of the coal breakers and the fierce heat of 
the glass factories are so plainly opposed to healthful 
development that it is a wonder children were ever 
allowed to enter such industries. There are other occu- 
pations in which conditions may be good or bad, accord- 
ing to the attitude of the owners or managers. In every 
case, if conditions are not known, some enquiry should 
be made before a child is encouraged or permitted to 
take up a given form of work. During childhood and 
adolescence it is easy to work irreparable harm, and a 
few dollars added to a family's income at the present 
time may be paid for later on by stunted physique and 
weakened vitality, if not by actual defect or infirmity. 

The third principle is perhaps less obvious than the 
two just mentioned, yet it is fully as important. Any 
work to which a child is put should have some value as 
training, and should lead to something. When a child 
leaves school he — and even more frequently, she — is apt 
to take up the first thing which offers itself. This is 
frequently an unskilled occupation, in which, after a few 



CARE OF NEEDY FAMILIES 135 

weeks' experience, the child can make all he will ever 
Be able to earn in it. For some of these occupations, 
he will presently become too old; in others, he will 
presently find the wage wholly insufficient or conditions 
intolerable. In either case, he is again just where he 
was when he first left school, so far as industrial train- 
ing and efficiency are concerned, except that he is older 
and has lost the first zest of feeling himself a wage 
earner. There has been nothing in what he has done 
to qualify him for doing anything else. He is adrift on 
the industrial sea, and it is dangerously probable that 
he will remain so. In some states, the public schools 
are trying to provide some industrial training which 
will fit the child to enter, when he leaves school, some 
industry in which he can pass from one grade to 
another, becoming at last a skilled worker, sure of good 
wages and reasonably steady employment. In other 
places, outside agencies provide some training of this 
kind, but far too often there is no chance for such train- 
ing except for those who can afford to enter special 
schools, or who can become apprentices. It is usually 
possible, however, for a visitor, by giving some thought 
and trouble to the matter, to find a place in which the 
child, entering at low wages, may at least learn some- 
thing which will enable him later on to get into better 
work. The child cannot be expected to take long views ; 
the parents, in some cases, are blinded by their imme- 
diate necessities ; but the visitor can and should look 
to the future, and bend his energies to seeing that the 
present independence of the family is not secured at the 
cost of the child's permanent welfare. Better a recourse 
to public or private charity than that. When, however, 
suitable work can be secured, the child and family alike 



136 HOW TO HELP 

are helped; and it may well be that the training the 
latter receives is worth more to it than its wage is to its 
family. The visitor who succeeds in starting a child in 
some form of employment really adapted to it, instead 
of letting it be thrust into the first place which can be 
found, may well feel that he has achieved a real and 
lasting good. 



CHAPTER XII 

CARE OF NEEDY FAMILIES: INTEMPERANCE 

Up to this point it has been taken for granted that the 
want with which the visitor has to deal has arisen either 
from misfortune or from lack of work, due, perhaps, 
to inefficiency, but not to direct fault on the part of the 
workers of the distressed family. It is rather the excep- 
tion, however, when a case of poverty can be thus 
simply classed. Ordinarily there are a number of con- 
tributory causes, and it will tax the visitor's skill and 
judgment to decide which is the principal and which the 
subsidiary. The two causes, involving a moral lapse, 
which are most likely to be noticed, are intemperance 
and desertion on the part of the natural breadwinner. 

It does not necessarily follow that these causes are 
the most frequent, but they are the most obvious. Other 
causes of an equally discreditable nature may be at work 
for a long time before their results can clearly be traced 
back to them, or it may never be possible to establish 
the connection. Dr. Warner, for instance, thinks that 
a large part of the poverty of the country is due to 
licentiousness, which unfits the laborer for his work, 
making him an undesirable employee, and thus leading 
to his irregular employment. It is plainly impossible 
for the average visitor to probe such a cause, and even 
were it as widespread and disastrous in its effects as 
Warner deems it, for the most part it would remain 
unknown. Again, dishonesty may be a determining 
factor of poverty to a much greater extent than is 

i37 



138 HOW TO HELP 

apparent. Occasionally a man is found guilty of theft 
or some similar crime, and sent to jail, leaving his family 
in want. More often, he will not commit an overt act 
which his employers think worth following up, but a 
suspicion that he is not "quite straight" will attach itself 
to him, keeping him out of the better shops, confining 
him to the least desirable associates, and indirectly 
bringing him lower and lower. This indirect influence 
might be at work for a long while before it became 
apparent to an outsider. 

Intemperance and desertion, on the other hand, are 
apparent and conspicuous causes. Both are rapid and 
direct in their effects, and generally speaking neither 
can be hidden for long. Of the two, intemperance is 
by far the more common, though desertion, which is 
often coupled with it, appears to be growing more fre- 
quent every year. The two are so frequently met with 
that it will be worth while to consider each at some 
length. 

In dealing with any specific case of intemperance it 
is important to decide whether it is a cause or an ef- 
fect of the poverty of the family. "Poverty produces 
drunkenness quite as often as drunkenness produces 
poverty." Many men drink, not from any inherent 
viciousness or even from any particular love of liquor, 
but simply because they are under-nourished and over- 
worked, and their whole system craves a stimulant. 
Students who, for the sake of observing tramp life at 
close quarters, have disguised themselves as homeless 
men and shared their experiences, are unanimous in 
declaring that after a night spent in one of the ill ven- 
tilated, overcrowded lodging houses, there is a strong 
demand for some stimulant to nullify temporarily the 



CARE OF NEEDY FAMILIES 139 

effect of the close air and evil odors. The average 
laborer's home is better than these lodgings, but it is 
often badly ventilated, and the sleeping rooms are far 
too crowded. In the shop or factory, again, the work- 
man meet9 with poor ventilation and the air is heavy 
with the odors of oil and material, or perhaps heated to 
the point of exhaustion. In many instances the mere 
lack of good air except for limited periods, is sufficient 
to produce a depressed physical condition, which calls 
loudly for a stimulant of any kind. When to this is 
added the effect of the rather general bad cooking of 
the tenements, with its attendant malnutrition, it is easy 
to understand that in many cases the bodily condition of 
the laborer is largely responsible for his intemperance. 

In other instances men drink mainly because of the 
intolerable narrowness and monotony of their lives, 
from which intoxication offers a temporary refuge. 
This is particularly apt to be the case with workers 
whose task requires close attention but no mental effort. 
They are, perhaps, not particularly intelligent to begin 
with, their work involves considerable nervous strain, 
and when the day's toil is ended physical weariness and 
mental exhaustion alike shut them out from the com- 
moner forms of relaxation. They need something which 
will make an appeal at once simple and strong, and this 
they find in liquor. Still others drink accidentally, as it 
were, because the saloon is the only place of amusement 
open to them, except the cheap theatre, and if they 
make use of its social opportunities they must, in com- 
mon self-respect, pay something in one form or another. 
Others are periodic drinkers, who for months at a time 
are models of industry and steadiness, but who are 



I 4 HOW TO HELP 

suddenly seized with a craving for liquor which appar- 
ently must be satisfied at any cost. 

Men belonging to any of these classes may be, on 
the whole, fair members of society; their over-indul- 
gence may cause only temporary absences from work, 
and they may provide well for their families. Often, 
however, this is not the case, and, under the best of 
circumstances, there is always the danger that the 
drinking may lose its occasional character and become 
more and more frequent, until the power to work and 
the ability to get work have alike disappeared. 

In all such cases of intemperance, common sense 
indicates that the best method of attacking the evil is 
to remove the cause. This requires first a close study 
of the individual drinker, to make sure what is the 
cause, or at least the principal cause, and then a long 
and arduous effort to bring about its removal. In cases 
where a man's physical condition seems probably the 
cause of his intemperance, it is sometimes possible to 
carry on a campaign of education in the home which 
will result in establishing better conditions, and in 
building up for him a physique which shall make the 
demand for a stimulant no longer irresistible. In such 
instances there is always a question as to whether the 
man is under-nourished because his income is insuffi- 
cient for the maintenance of his family and himself in 
a state of physical efficiency, or whether his wife does 
not know how to make the best use of what he brings 
in. Naturally, one has to know a family pretty well 
before one can judge of this, and must establish terms 
of friendly intimacy with the wife before making sug- 
gestions as to how she can obtain better results for 
her outlay, provided her lack of knowledge is respon- 



CARE OF NEEDY FAMILIES 



141 



sible for the trouble. Whatever the original cause of 
intemperance, an improvement of home conditions, 
when these are bad, in respect to cooking, ventilation 
and neatness, will aid in overcoming the evil. 

Since much intemperance is due to a lack of oppor- 
tunities for wholesome recreation, anything which offers 
a chance for relaxation and social enjoyment should be 
earnestly sought. Some discussion will be given in 
another chapter of substitutes for the saloon, which give 
the opportunity for society and enjoyment without the 
temptation to over-indulgence in drink. In communi- 
ties where such substitutes do not exist, the visitor may 
do something by trying to find any taste the man may 
possess and providing some means of gratifying this. 
When the free garden plots, or "Pingree potato patches" 
were started, it was found that more than one man 
addicted to drink became so much interested in the cul- 
tivation of his plot that he practically gave up liquor 
for the sake of putting his spare time and money into 
its cultivation. Sometimes the effort to interest a man 
works out into grotesque developments. 

"Humanly speaking," said one worker, "it was a 
graphophone, one of those detestable, squawking con- 
trivances, and a number of records, mostly of senti- 
mental songs or alleged humorous recitations, which 
saved Jim Smith from drinking himself to death. I 
don't think he wanted to be a drunkard, but he had got 
started and couldn't seem to stop. He told me about 
it in a moment of confidence. 'You see/ he said, 'when 
I've come home and had my supper, it's darned dull 
sitting 'round the house alone. The missis is washing 
the dishes or putting the kids to bed, and there ain't 
nothing going on, and some of the boys is sure to come 



142 



HOW TO HELP 



along and I go off with 'em to the saloons. Sometimes 
I've kept away for as much as three weeks, but a man's 
got to have something to do with himself, and there's 
always something doing there. Why,' he ended, 
admiringly, 'they've got a talking machine there that's 
a whole show by itself.' 

"I suppressed a natural inclination to suggest that he 
might help Mrs. Smith wash the dishes, if he found 
doing nothing so dull, and tried to see the situation as he 
did. He was a good-natured but rather weak man. It 
was natural for him to want company and amusement. 
He had tried, I knew, to break off his habit, but the 
saloon's attractions and associations were too strong for 
him. The end of my deliberations was a consultation 
with Mrs. Smith, and the installation of a graphophone, 
for which I paid, with the understanding that they were 
to pay me in small instalments. 

"The first night was a gala occasion. All the neigh- 
bors wanted to hear it, but as space was limited, it was 
the prize of the earlier comers. Jim tentatively pro- 
posed a system of relays of hearers, which would have 
kept the room full all night, but Mrs. Smith, with an 
eye to the following evenings, decisively regretted the 
smallness of her house and urged the disappointed ones 
to come next night. They came, and kept on coming. 
When interest seemed to be flagging a little, I came down 
with some new records, and those in their turn had to 
be exhibited to the whole neighborhood. It got to be 
quite the regular thing for at least two or three of the 
neighbors to drop in on Jim after supper, and as Mrs. 
Smith never objected to their pipes, and the graphophone 
was inexhaustible, it was nearly as cheerful a circle as 
at the saloon. Then listening to the machine fired Jim's 



CARE OF NEEDY FAMILIES 143 

ambition to do some singing himself, and we discovered 
he had a very passable voice. It was his own proposition 
that he should join some singing club, a proposition 
which he promptly carried out. Mrs. Smith seized the 
occasion and moved into a new neighborhood, where Jim 
didn't know the frequenters of the saloons, and he was 
too busy with his music and his graphophone — which 
had to be shown of! to all the new neighbors, of course 
— to get into that crowd. He didn't become a model 
of sobriety all at once, but he has been steadily improv- 
ing ever since he got the machine, and I confidently 
expect to see the time when he will have forgotten that 
drink ever had any particular attraction for him." 

In addition to more healthful conditions of living and 
new interests, with opportunities for society away from 
the temptation to drink, it will be found as a rule that 
whatever strengthens the family tie makes it easier for 
a man to forego an accustomed stimulant. It is well, 
therefore, whenever possible, to secure opportunities for 
the family to enjoy themselves together. Friendly 
counsel to the wife as to how to make her home more 
cheerful and attractive, the loan of books or papers which 
may interest her and her husband alike, tickets for con- 
certs or lectures which they may attend together, fresh- 
air outings, or other arrangements which may make it 
possible for the family to go out together for a Saturday 
afternoon picnic or a Sunday in the country — all these 
and many other devices may be of use. 

Such efforts against so serious an evil as intemperance 
may seem woefully trivial. They are not panaceas, cer- 
tainly, and in many cases they will seem to have no 
effect at all. Still, they are worth while in themselves, 
and if the visitor feels in addition the capacity for direct 



144 HOW TO HELP 

preaching of temperance and deems it justified by the 
circumstances, it is not precluded. The indirect methods 
have this great advantage, that they cannot in any way 
hurt the self-respect of the man for whose benefit they 
are undertaken, while a direct attack on the subject of his 
habits may not only humiliate but alienate him, and render 
the visitor's further efforts futile. 

There is one class for whom such indirect work is apt 
to be especially helpful, and that is the English workmen 
newly arrived in this country. The first two years of an 
English laborer's stay here are apt to be a time of serious 
danger. He has in all probability been accustomed to 
drink beer as a matter of course at home, without feeling 
any ill effect from it, and naturally he no more thinks of 
giving it up on coming to America than of giving up 
tobacco or sugar. But the difference in the climate and 
the difference in the beer are alike marked and harmful 
in their effects, and the man who, in the old country, 
might have gone on drinking moderately all his life, is 
in peril of becoming a heavy drinker here. At the same 
time that this unanticipated temptation besets him, the 
fact that he is among strangers and no longer has an 
established reputation to live up to, weakens the restraints 
which would keep him from yielding. Whatever can be 
done to increase the strength of his family ties, to sus- 
tain his self-respect and to make him feel that he has a 
character to maintain, is the best way of helping him. 

So far we have considered only the moderate or occa- 
sional drinkers. Sometimes the worker will come in 
contact with a family in which the man is a vicious or a 
confirmed drunkard. If, when drinking, he is violent 
and abusive, it may be necessary to take legal steps for 
the protection of his wife and children, or, if he has be- 



CARE OF NEEDY FAMILIES 145 

come such a confirmed drunkard that he is a burden 
upon the family, the law may again be invoked. This 
is never a satisfactory conclusion, for at best it rarely 
amounts to anything beyond getting the man out of the 
way temporarily, without doing anything to make him 
better. In most places the penalty for habitual drunken- 
ness is a jail sentence of varying length — or shortness. 
No reformatory work is attempted, no effort is made so 
to build up the man's physique as to make him less sus- 
ceptible to temptation, and he comes out unimproved, to 
begin drinking once more, to be re-arrested, re-sentenced, 
and to go through the dreary round again and again 
until some day death comes to his relief. 

Sometimes, if a man of this kind will consent to enter 
a sanitarium or to take the Keeley or some similar treat- 
ment, a cure may be effected; and sometimes instances 
of conversion occur little short of the miraculous. Mira- 
cles, however, cannot be counted on, and after a man has 
reached a certain stage in intemperance his case is, 
humanly speaking, hopeless. Whether this stage has 
been reached or not is open to question, and if the 
visitor has the necessary means and can secure the 
patient's consent, sanitarium treatment may perhaps re- 
store him to sobriety, even though his condition had been 
most discouraging. If this is impossible, admission may 
sometimes be secured to an Inebriates' Home, in which 
he can live not unhappily in sobriety and partial self- 
support. Too often it will be found impossible to make 
use of either alternative. Then, for the sake of the 
family, it is usually best to insist upon legal proceedings 
against the man, and to refuse assistance unless these are 
taken. 

A woman's drinking is felt to be more of a menace to 
10 



146 HOW TO HELP 

the home than a man's, since it brings both the liquor 
and its effects more directly into the house than does his. 
Also, a woman, being with her children far more than is 
a man, can better protect them from their father's in- 
temperance than he can from hers. Fortunately drink- 
ing is not so common among women as among men, and 
their love of their children is apt to be stronger, affording 
a powerful motive for their abstinence, or for their 
reformation if they have fallen into intemperance. 

What has been said above of the causes producing 
intemperance, and of the indirect methods of combat- 
ing it, applies with even more force to women than to 
men. The monotony of a woman's life is apt to be 
greater than a man's, her malnutrition at least as great, 
while her physical strength is less, and thus she is more 
susceptible to the demand for a stimulant. A woman's 
acquaintances are apt to be her immediate neighbors, and 
her drinking habits are often directly due to the influ- 
ence of these neighbors. Therefore, good results can 
sometimes be obtained by persuading the family to re- 
move to a better neighborhood, and by trying to secure 
for the woman, through a mothers' meeting or sewing 
circle or club group of some kind, a different set of 
acquaintances. In itself membership in some such group 
is helpful, breaking the monotony of household duties, 
introducing a pleasant social element, and widening the 
field of her interests. 

When a woman has become a confirmed drunkard, the 
welfare of the children demands legal action. If the 
husband is a man of good character, he will have no 
difficulty at all in securing a decree giving him the cus- 
tody of the children, and forbidding their mother access 
to them. If he also is intemperate or otherwise dis- 



CARE OF NEEDY FAMILIES 



147 



qualified for their guardianship, unless some relative can 
be found willing to take care of the children, the Society 
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children should be 
appealed to, and the children legally removed from their 
parents' custody and control. This may be a desirable 
preliminary to placing them with a relative, if one can 
be found to take them, as it deprives the parents 
of any further rights over the children. If the children 
are taken by friends without this formality having been 
gone through with, the parents may at any time give con- 
siderable trouble by attempting to regain possession of 
them. 

To summarize : In cases in which drunkenness seems 
curable, every effort should be made to induce the drinker 
to give up the habit, and the efforts most likely to suc- 
ceed are those which substitute for it some other in- 
terest or enjoyment. After intemperance has reached a 
certain stage it must be regarded as a serious disease, 
which can be cured, if at all, only by long continued 
treatment — treatment which, under present conditions, it 
is exceedingly difficult to secure for people without 
means. If this treatment cannot be given, the welfare of 
the children may demand the breaking up of the family, 
either through a legal separation, or through the formal 
removal of the children from their parents' custody. 
This is a conclusion to be avoided wherever possible, but 
when, after careful observation and experiment, it 
becomes evident that it is a choice between this and the 
sacrifice of the children, the welfare of the latter should 
be the determining consideration. 



CHAPTER XIII 

CARE OF NEEDY FAMILIES: DESERTION 

The change in philanthropic methods, due to a closer 
study of the causes of poverty and a consideration of the 
social aspects of the individual case, is nowhere more 
apparent than in the attitude toward deserted families. 
Fifteen years ago, the deserted family was hardly dif- 
ferentiated from any other instance of poverty; it was 
a family in want, and the mere fact that that want was 
caused by the desertion of the natural breadwinner did 
not seem to the philanthropists of the day to have any 
material bearing on the situation. It is significant that 
in the comparative table of causes of poverty given by 
Dr. Warner in American Charities, a book published so 
lately as 1894, desertion is not given alone as a cause, 
but is included under the heading, ''No Male Support," 
which, a footnote assures us, covers "Death of Husband'' 
and "Desertion." "No Male Support," in its turn, is 
classed under causes indicating misfortune. 1 Today 
desertion is not only recognized as a cause of poverty of 
sufficient importance to merit separate and serious con- 
sideration, but in most of the large cities special com- 
mittees have been appointed to gather statistics and 
ponder the question in all its bearings. The subject is 
discussed at almost every national or state conference, it 
appears in the pages of every magazine devoted to phil- 
anthropy, and it is rapidly developing a literature of its 
own. 

1 American Charities, Table IV. 

148 



CARE OF NEEDY FAMILIES 



149 



One reason for this change of attitude is the growing 
number of cases of desertion of wife or family, and the 
consequent increase in the burden of supporting these 
deserted families which is thrown upon the community. 
There is little question that the evil is increasing, but few 
realize its present extent. In a careful study of the sub- 
ject, Mr. Wm. H. Baldwin states the situation concisely 
and forcibly: 

"More than seven per cent, of all the cases treated" — 
in Washington, during the past nine years — "have been 
deserted wives. In Boston the average of all records 
kept, beginning with 1889, is practically ten per cent. In 
Orange, N. J., the average for the last three years is just 
eleven per cent., while in Seattle, Wash., cases of 
deserted wives made up more than thirteen per cent, of 
all relieved during seven months of the last fiscal year. 
Any conduct which accounts for one-tenth of all the 
cases which charitable societies are called on to assist 
demands careful attention from these agencies, as well as 
from those who may be asked by them to lessen the 
burden by passing laws which will oblige the deserter to 
assume his share, and deter others from deserting by 
closing the way of escape." 1 

It adds emphasis to the above statement when careful 
students of the statistics of charitable relief tell us that 
desertion is responsible for more cases of want than any 
other one cause, except illness. Since every one of the 
deserted families appearing in these statistics becomes a 
charge upon the public to some degree and for some 
length of time, and since their need of help frequently 
continues over long periods, it is self-evident that the 
problem is one of serious proportions. 

One consequence of the closer study given to this 
cause is a marked change in the treatment of a deserted 

1 Family Desertion and Non-Support Laws, p. 8. 



i5o 



HOW TO HELP 



family. Fifteen years ago, as is clearly indicated by the 
classification given by Dr. Warner, a deserted family 
was supposed to occupy the same position as a family 
which had lost its head by death. The widow or the 
deserted wife succeeded to the sole responsibility, and the 
efforts of the charitable public were directed toward 
making her situation as easy as possible. Today it is 
felt that charitable workers have a distinct duty to per- 
form towards the deserter, and while the care of the 
family is by no means to be neglected, no pains must be 
spared to find the recreant husband and father for the 
purpose either of bringing him back to his duties or 
seeing that his evasion is punished. 

When a worker is brought into touch with a deserted 
family, the first steps should be the same as in any other 
case of need. Emergency aid, if really required, should 
be given, and all the information attainable bearing on 
the situation should be gathered. What action should 
be taken thereafter depends largely upon what this inves- 
tigation reveals as to the character and habits of the 
family. 

A good deal of sympathy has been expressed recently 
for the deserter, and we have had vivid pictures of the 
man driven by stress of poverty to abandon his family, 
finding himself unable to support them, and feeling both 
that they will be better cared for if he is out of the way, 
and that he cannot bring himself to appeal for charity. 
Such instances may occur, but the careful studies of 
desertion made in Boston, in Philadelphia and Wash- 
ington, and the study made in New York of cases gath- 
ered from all over the country, go to show that the 
deserter of this kind, if he exists at all, is in a small 



CARE OF NEEDY FAMILIES 151 

minority, and that ordinarily the man who abandons wife 
and children is influenced by frankly selfish motives. 

A study of the reasons for a man's deserting his 
family, undertaken in New York, shows a variety of 
surface causes. In nearly one-third of the cases consid- 
ered, the men left just before or after the birth of a 
child ; about one-seventh left during or just after a spree, 
and a slightly larger proportion left as the immediate 
consequence of a quarrel. "Fifty-five had been quarrel- 
ing with their wives — 'over religious matters/ 'because 
she had asked him to go to work,' or had refused to sup- 
port him any longer, or 'had found fault with his ways,' 
or some unspecified but doubtless equally irreconcilable 
difference of opinion. One had 'been beating his wife 
with a stove-lifter, but when a neighbor interfered he 
ran away and stayed for four years.' " On the whole, 
the immediate reasons are nearly as various as the 
deserters. These seem, however, not to be so much 
reasons as pretexts — mere occasions rather than causes. 
Restlessness, a desire to escape the responsibilities of 
family life, the ease of getting away, and the facility with 
which the burden of a family's support may be shifted 
from the father to the public — these are some of the real 
causes operating to increase the number of deserters, and 
to throw a growing and almost intolerable burden upon 
the charitable resources of the community. 

For the purpose of considering methods of treatment, 
deserters may be roughly divided into three groups — 
the bona fide deserter for the first time, the habitual 
deserter, and the feigned deserter. These classes might 
be numerously subdivided, but for working purpose this 
grouping will answer. 

If the desertion is for the first time, it is most desir- 



152 HOW TO HELP 

able both to keep the family from becoming accustomed 
to depending on outside help, and to find the husband 
and secure his return — without the intervention of the 
law if possible, with it if necessary. If the temporary 
aid the family must have can be secured, even at the cost 
of much time and trouble, from friends and relatives, 
from their church or from any other natural source, the 
good result will be twofold; every one of those helping 
will become an active agent in seeking the return of the 
missing husband, and the latter will not be tempted to 
repeat his escapade by finding how all too ready the 
community is to undertake the support of his family 
when it suits him to abandon it. No permanent provision 
for the family should be made until every effort to locate 
the missing man has failed and there seems good reason 
to believe that his departure is final. 

If it is known that news of his family will reach the 
absentee, good results can sometimes be obtained by 
refusing all aid. This is a difficult plan to carry out, and 
would not be available in most instances. The Phila- 
delphia Society for Organizing Charity, however, gives 
a story of its effectiveness in one case, which illustrates 
the complexity of the average instance of desertion. 

"The visitor from the Society found a rather dis- 
couraging situation when she first went to see Mrs. 
O'Connell, a woman whose husband had deserted her 
six weeks before, leaving her penniless with six children, 
the oldest eleven years of age, and the baby only two 
weeks old. Mrs. O'Connell was loud in her denuncia- 
tion of her husband's drinking habits and unkindness to 
her, and vowed that she would never again live with 
him. * * * 

"It became apparent that Mrs. O'Connell was capable, 



CARE OF NEEDY FAMILIES 153 

energetic and industrious, but possessed of a hot temper 
and a sharp tongue, and her mother-love, while it was 
very intense for her own, had not been big enough to 
take in her step-children, even delicate, half-invalid 
Mamie. It was this very lack in her which had been the 
most serious source of trouble between her and her hus- 
band; for, although no one pretended to deny that he 
drank a good deal more than he should, and that his 
treatment of his wife had not always been calculated to 
soothe her irritable disposition, he had the good qualities 
of a strong feeling for his home and a very real love 
for his children. With the redeeming features in both of 
them as a background, it seemed that in some way it 
ought to be possible to bring them together again and to 
help them to rebuild their home life — certainly to pre- 
vail upon the husband to resume responsibility for the 
support of his family. To accomplish this end, however, 
great firmness and tact were necessary. Although the 
O'Connells knew Henry's whereabouts, they could not 
be induced to reveal it. And Mrs. O'Connell's relatives 
were not able or willing to help her very much and 
agreed with us that if O'Connell did not soon return, his 
family would have to be broken up. To this Mrs. O'Con- 
nell was much opposed, as she was determined to keep 
her children with her and thought that the Society for 
Organizing Charity ought to add to her earnings what- 
ever was necessary to make it possible. The Society 
knew that this would tend to make Henry O'Connell feel 
that his family was getting on very nicely without him, 
and that he need not return. Poor Mrs. O'Connell 
struggled on, earning as much as she could by washing, 
but it is not strange if from her point of view it seemed 
a bit hard that, when she was doing her best, the Society 



154 HOW TO HELP 

should refuse to help her out by gifts of money or food. 
After several months she found the struggle too unequal, 
so she begged to have word sent to her husband that the 
family must be broken up if he did not return speedily to 
care for them, and that she would withdraw the warrant 
against him if he did so. 

"His sisters and brothers had said he was ill, and when 
he appeared a couple of weeks after his wife's message, 
he certainly looked as if he had been. Before that Mrs. 
O'Connell had been inclined to disbelieve all the accounts 
of his sickness, and even the truth of the statement that 
he was out of Philadelphia. But she had softened a good 
deal toward him by the time he came home. With her 
resolution to control her temper and his to keep from 
drinking, they began life together over again." 

In trying to reestablish the husband in his duties as 
head of a family, the preliminary difficulty is to find him. 
It is but rarely that, as in the case of the O'Connells, 
relatives know where he is and will act as intermediaries. 
Sometimes the police can trace him, especially if he has 
remained in his home town. Sometimes he will have told 
companions where he is going, or have dropped some 
hint in his wife's hearing. It is worth while to have 
enquiries made in any city where he has formerly lived 
or been employed. If he is found in any city which has 
a charity organization society, it is well to ask that one 
of its agents will visit him and try to persuade him either 
to return, or, if he is working, to send for his family. 
This will often render it unnecessary to resort to legal 
measures, but if persuasion fails, the law should be 
invoked. 

This, however, should not be undertaken without care- 
ful legal advice. The laws governing desertion vary 



CARE OF NEEDY FAMILIES 155 

from state to state. In a few places it is classed as a 
felony, and if the deserter has left the state he may be 
extradited upon demand. In most places it is only a 
misdemeanor. Whether or not, under these latter cir- 
cumstances, extradition can be secured will depend 
largely upon the attitude of the legal authorities of the 
two states concerned. At least one instance of extra- 
dition from and by states regarding desertion as a 
misdemeanor has been reported, but the process is 
troublesome, and its results by no means certain. 

Usually workers who wish to take legal action content 
themselves, if the husband has left the state, with sending 
the wife after him, in which case, being in the same state 
with him, she may bring suit against him for non-sup- 
port. It is essential to secure a lawyer's advice on such 
points before attempting action. 

The men of the second group, the habitual deserters, 
are the bane of the charity worker. Sometimes such a 
man disappears a short time before the birth of a child. 
His wife, perhaps a self-respecting, decent woman, will 
struggle along doing what she can for the support of her 
children, until her condition renders her helpless. Then 
public or private charity comes to the rescue, aid is pro- 
vided, the family kept together, and, perhaps, as weeks 
pass by, reestablished on a comfortable basis, until sud- 
denly the man reappears to take up his interrupted home 
life as if nothing had happened, and to continue it until 
the next occasion when he wishes to avoid increased 
expense and diminished comfort, when he again disap- 
pears, and the whole process is gone through with once 
more. 

Or perhaps such a deserter may be a periodic drinker, 
who, after months of sobriety, will suddenly yield to the 



156 HOW TO HELP 

craving for drink, use up all his money, pawn everything 
he can lay hands on, and, leaving his wife in absolute 
destitution, finally disappear, entirely confident that out- 
side help will not be wanting to take care of her and the 
children until it suits him to reappear. Or he may be 
simply the victim of a wandering disposition — a married 
tramp, who refuses to be bound by the responsibilities 
he has assumed, but who finds it convenient to have a 
home to which he may return when tired of roving. 

In any case the result on the family is much the same. 
It is bad enough for a man to desert his children utterly 
and leave the care of their upbringing to be shared be- 
tween his wife and the community; it is worse when he 
comes and goes, breaking up any arrangement which 
may have been made for their permanent care, forcing 
them to pass through alternate periods of destitution, 
dependence on charity and whole or partial self-support, 
and continually increasing the size of the family for 
which he will make no adequate provision. 

For the sake of preventing such a state of affairs, many 
of the most experienced workers advise that after a 
man has twice deserted his family, no aid shall be given, 
in case of further desertion, except upon condition of an 
absolute separation between the couple. If the wife de- 
clines to agree to this, they counsel refusing all help, 
with a view to having the family broken up. If aid can 
be entirely withheld, it will mean that the wife must go 
to work outside of her home — usually that she must 
give up the home altogether. Perhaps it may be neces- 
sary for her to go with her children into an institution, 
or to place some of the children in an institution, or to 
leave them in the care of relatives or friends, while she 



CARE OF NEEDY FAMILIES 157 

with one or two of the youngest goes into service, or in 
some other way provides for herself and them. 

Breaking up a home in this manner is not an ideal 
solution of the problem, but it has this advantage, that it 
renders it impossible for the husband to come and go at 
pleasure. In some cases, a man returning and finding 
his family thus scattered, has set himself to work in good 
earnest to rebuild the home, and has thenceforth stayed 
in it and done his part manfully. In others, this course 
has at least prevented any further increase in the family, 
a result greatly to be desired in view of the inevitable 
heritage of weakened constitution and unhealthful en- 
vironment and unfortunate training which awaits the 
children of such a union. 

It is often difficult to carry out this resolution to with- 
hold aid. The situation of the deserted family is a 
pitiable one, and even if the conscientious worker, believ- 
ing that this is the only method of really helping, refuses 
assistance, interference is likely to come from outside. 
The unintelligent and thoughtless giver may be appealed 
to, and seeing only that here is a deserted family which 
is likely to be broken up through poverty, and feeling 
that the home is the one thing to be maintained at all 
costs, such a giver is likely to rush to the rescue, render 
nugatory all efforts to improve permanently the unsatis- 
factory situation, and make it possible for the deserter 
to come and go at pleasure. There are few cases in 
which thoughtless giving causes more harm. 

If the wife is willing to consent to a permanent sepa- 
ration, the objection to giving help disappears at once, 
and care should be taken that sufficient aid is provided 
to prevent her from undergoing too heavy a strain in 
her efforts to fill the place of both parents. Ordinarily 



158 HOW TO HELP 

a legal separation should be insisted upon. A few 
women may be found of sufficient firmness to keep their 
word in this matter, but usually if the husband reap- 
pears with a little show of penitence, and a few promises 
of better conduct in the future, the wife will be found 
ready to forget the past, and despite a long experience of 
the brevity of these resolutions, to believe in their per- 
sistence this time. 

Moreover, if the husband chooses to assert his legal 
rights, it is almost impossible for the wife to refuse to 
live with him, unless a separation has been secured. 
No matter what his conduct has been, no matter whether 
he has contributed to her support or she alone has pro- 
vided for herself and her children for years, he is her 
husband and in the eyes of the law her tenement is his 
house. If she tries to keep him out he has a right to 
break in. A separation is the only way of securing her 
permanent freedom from his presence, unless she is of 
sufficiently strong moral fibre to dominate him. A 
separation is preferable to a divorce, as it does not give 
the right to remarry. If the family is Roman Catholic, 
their priest should be consulted, and a separation ar- 
ranged only in accordance with his advice. While that 
church does not recognize divorce for causes arising 
after marriage, it does not necessarily disapprove of 
separation when the welfare of the family demands it. 

Whether or not a permanent separation can be 
secured, the worker should make every effort to force 
the absent husband to contribute to the support of his 
family, or, if that cannot be done, to secure his arrest 
and punishment on the ground of desertion or of non- 
support. Often the only result of such an effort will 
be that the man is frightened off for a considerable 



CARE OF NEEDY FAMILIES 159 

period, or perhaps for good and all, in which case the 
worker has some reason to follow honest Dogberry's 
advice, and thank heaven he is rid of a knave. 

Too often it will be found impossible to reach the 
deserter through the law. As long as the present diffi- 
culties exist in the way of securing extradition it is an 
easy matter for an offender to get across a state line 
and laugh at efforts to secure his punishment. Even 
when an action can be brought, the results are apt to 
be unsatisfactory. If the man is ordered to pay a weekly 
sum towards his family's support, it is again easy for 
him to leave the state. If he is convicted of non-support 
the punishment is apt to be too light to be of much effect 
as a deterrent, while his imprisonment contributes noth- 
ing toward the support of his wife and children. Never- 
theless, it is of much importance that every case of 
desertion should be prosecuted as far as possible, with 
a view toward making the offender's path as little attrac- 
tive as may be. 

Feigned desertions sometimes occur. If a family is 
in want, and one of its members is an able-bodied man 
out of work, society has a tendency to offer employment, 
and to refuse help if this is not accepted. Consequently, 
if a husband has an aversion to work, and neither he nor 
his wife has any objection to begging mixed with skilful 
falsehood, he may withdraw into a modest seclusion 
while she goes forth to seek aid in the role of a deserted 
wife. Sometimes the deception will be kept up for 
weeks or even months, help being given freely to the 
supposedly destitute wife and children, which is fully 
enjoyed by the husband who, perhaps, has not even left 
the house. Of course, if a determined effort is made to 



160 HOW TO HELP 

find the man, a fraud of this sort is likely to be exposed 
very promptly. 

Throughout this discussion it has been taken for 
granted that the deserter is a man. It is so unusual for 
a woman to desert a dependent husband and children 
that the problem cannot be said to exist. If she deserts 
a self-supporting husband, the matter is not likely to be 
brought to the notice of a charitable worker, as the hus- 
band is still able to care for his children. If she deserts 
dependent children, the civil authorities take up the case 
rather zealously, and again the charitable worker is not 
likely to be called upon for a solution of the difficulty. 

Neither has anything been said about the cases of 
almost justifiable desertion. Occasionally among the 
deserted wives one finds a scolding or whining woman, 
untidy and indolent, quarrelsome or extravagant, whose 
home is so little attractive and whose personality is so 
repellent, that the worker is conscious of considerable 
sympathy with the husband. Still, there are always the 
children to be considered. If the woman's character is 
not such as to justify taking the children from her, it 
does not justify the man in abandoning her and them, 
and while the worker may very properly use every 
means to make the wife see her duties as a home-maker, 
there should be no relaxation in the effort to make the 
man do his duty as breadwinner. What has been said in 
a former chapter about indirect methods of combating 
intemperance applies equally to desertion. Whatever 
helps to give a man a more healthful and attractive life, 
with a wholesome variety of interest and necessary 
recreation, tends to diminish desertion, as well as drunk- 
enness, and to establish the home on a surer basis. 

To summarize: In dealing with cases of desertion 



CARE OF NEEDY FAMILIES !6i 

one has a duty toward society, as well as toward the 
family immediately affected. The object should be the 
maintenance of the family group, as nearly as possible, 
in its integral state. If the man has proved by repeated 
desertions that he is a disturbing element, he should be 
eliminated and the family kept together without him. 
When this is not possible, through the refusal of the 
wife to separate from him, help of all kinds should be 
refused, and the family, when deserted, compelled to 
accept indoor relief, under whatever conditions the com- 
munity may attach to this form of help. Every means 
should be tried to make the deserter voluntarily return 
to his duties, but if he is incorrigible, legal measures 
should be taken against him. 



ii 



CHAPTER XIV 

STANDARD OF LIVING 

"To live miserable we know not why, to have the dread of 
hunger, to work sore and yet gain nothing, — this is the essence 
of poverty." — Robert Hunter. 

In the cases hitherto considered distress has been 
due to some definite incident, accident or misdoing, as 
illness, lack of work, intemperance or desertion. It has 
been taken for granted that apart from this particular 
cause, the family are or should be able to maintain 
themselves. It may be desirable to give temporary help 
freely, but there is a specific cause of want, and the 
most important duty is to remove that, after which the 
reestablishment of the family becomes a comparatively 
•easy matter. 

Unfortunately there are many cases in which the 
diagnosis is not so simple — cases in which, for one rea- 
son or another, the earning capacity of the family is 
not, at the best of times, adequate to its healthful sup- 
port, and in which there seems a demand for help con- 
tinuing over a term of years. When this deficiency in 
earning capacity is due to the death or permanent dis- 
ability of some of the natural breadwinners, the question 
of what ought to be done is not so difficult; the main 
trouble lies*in doing it. But when there has been no 
such stroke of calamity and yet the family is not prop- 
erly self-sustaining, the situation is perplexing. 

The problem presents itself in its most difficult form 
when one finds a family consisting of man, wife and 

162 



STANDARD OF LIVING 163 

children, in which the man is sober, honest and indus- 
trious, but an unskilled workman or employed in some 
of the more poorly paid trades, and unable to secure 
wages adequate to his needs. Such families are apt to 
come to the notice of charitable workers during some 
time of special stress in which they have been forced to 
appeal for help, and there is a pretty general tendency 
for the worker to feel satisfied if the applicants can be 
pulled through this and restored to their former con- 
dition of self-support. In the case supposed this is 
entirely inadequate aid, and the worker has not really 
accomplished much for their benefit until they have been 
placed in such a position that their income is sufficient 
for the maintenance of a healthful standard of living. 

In attempting any result of this kind the first ques- 
tion naturally is : "What should the family income be ? 
How much is needed to support a given number of 
people, maintaining them in at least such a state of 
physical efficiency that they shall not, through under 
nutrition or frequent illnesses, find their earning capac- 
ity crippled?" This problem has never been satisfac- 
torily worked out, and the best studies yet made in 
regard to it deal with foreign conditions. 

The average workingman's family is supposed to con- 
sist of the parents and from two to four children. Most 
workers among the poor will agree that this is a con- 
servative estimate of its size. A few years ago Mr. B. 
S. Rowntree carried through some careful studies of 
poverty in York, England, which brought him to the 
conclusion that the smallest possible sum on which this 
average family could maintain unimpaired its working 
capacity was twenty-one shillings eight pence per week. 
On any sum smaller than this the family must inevitably 



164 HOW TO HELP 

go without some necessity, and by going without it 
render some or all of its members less able to do the 
work which should procure other necessities. More- 
over, to make this minimum income suffice for its pur- 
pose it must be administered with the strictest economy 
and most scientific judgment, applying every penny to 
the one object of obtaining the absolutely necessary food, 
clothing and shelter, leaving nothing for illness, amuse- 
ments, church purposes, books and papers, education, 
neighborly kindnesses or indulgences of any sort. Even 
letter writing among relatives must be dropped to save 
postage. Every penny was to go for the plainest pos- 
sible food, for clothing selected solely on the ground of 
warmth and decency, and for lodging and fuel. It is 
unnecessary to say that the cases in which such an in- 
come would be so administered are rare. 

In the United States no general agreement has been 
reached either as to what constitutes a normal standard 
of living, or what income is necessary to maintain such 
a standard in different parts of the country. What 
degree of hardship is it socially desirable that a family 
should be permitted to endure? What degree of com- 
fort is required to maintain a worker and his dependents 
in a reasonable state of health, efficiency and morality? 
It is not a question of the sum on which a family can 
manage to exist and reproduce. When living means 
bare existence, its cost can be cut again and again before 
the irreducible minimum is reached. But it is not to the 
interest of society as a whole that any of its members 
should merely exist. The physical effect of such living 
has been strikingly shown in England where, in the fac- 
tory districts, it has been found difficult to secure the 
requisite number of recruits for the army, because the 



STANDARD OF LIVING 165 

working classes have become so undersized and defec- 
tive that they cannot pass the preliminary tests. Its 
moral effects cannot be so definitely shown, but there is 
a growing conviction among social workers that intem- 
perance, licentiousness and a low moral standard gen- 
erally are as often the consequence as the cause of 
poverty. If we are to maintain what are rather vaguely 
known as American conditions, the worker's income 
must be sufficient for healthful, moral and decent living, 
with some provision for education and general culture, 
some margin for the expenses of illness or accident, and 
some possibility of laying by savings for the inevitable 
rainy day. 

What are the factors which make up such a standard 
of living, and on what income can they be secured? 
There are a few essentials which all would agree must 
be included. A place of shelter is indispensable, of 
course, but it is not enough that it should be merely a 
shelter. It must be reasonably sanitary, and must be 
roomy enough to permit of keeping up the ordinary 
decencies of life. Dark, unventilated rooms make 
directly for disease or chronic invalidism. Toilet ar- 
rangements used in common by a whole tenement are 
dangerous alike to health and morals. Overcrowding 
is not only inimical to health, but may have dire effects 
upon the character. Concerning what constitutes over- 
crowding there is some difference of opinion. Recent 
investigators in New York have fixed upon one and a 
half persons to a room as the ratio which should not be 
exceeded, and have decided that overcrowding exists 
whenever more than four people occupy three rooms, or 
more than six people are found in four. A modification 
should be made in case babies or very young children 



166 HOW TO HELP 

form part of the household. In view of the size of the 
average New York room, this estimate cannot be said 
to err on the side of over liberality, though the allow- 
ance may be ample in places where larger rooms are the 
rule. As far as health is concerned, one large room 
may perhaps furnish abundant sleeping accommodations 
for a whole family, but from the standpoint of decency 
and morality overcrowding exists whenever parents and 
grown children, or boys and girls beyond the age of 
early childhood, are obliged to occupy the same room, 
no matter what its size. It is not claiming too much to 
say that a normal standard of living demands a well 
lighted and well ventilated home, properly equipped, ac- 
cording to its location, with water supply and drainage 
and toilet accommodations, and sufficiently large to 
avoid any need for unhealthful or indecorous over- 
crowding. 

Food is an even more primal necessity than shelter, 
yet to say what kinds and amounts should be included 
in a normal standard, — in other words, what a family's 
food ought to cost, — is a very troublesome question. 
Considerations of age and sex, of nationality and occu- 
pation and climate must be taken into account. It is 
not enough that the appetite should be dulled, and the 
worker and his family be unconscious of hunger. The 
women who live principally upon bread and tea are 
often quite unaware that they are hungry, yet there is 
not the slightest question that they are under nourished. 
Unfortunately the importance of sufficient food of the 
right kind is not universally recognized, and there is a 
general tendency to economize in this direction when- 
ever any special need arises. Among the very poor it is 
almost invariably the case that on "rent week" the 



STANDARD OF LIVING 167 

amount spent for food — an amount already in many cases 
entirely too small — is cruelly cut to make up the rent, 
which must be paid at any cost. Even among those who 
are above this stage, habitual under nourishment is not 
rare. In a recent careful study of living expenses in 
New York City 1 it was found that the families studied 
were insufficiently fed when less than twenty-two cents 
a day per adult male, with a proportionate allowance for 
women and children, was spent for food. It is difficult 
to see how proper nourishment can be secured for less. 
A dollar and a half a week does not seem an extrava- 
gant amount for the food of a man engaged in hard 
labor, even where prices are not quite so high as in New 
York. Professor Atwater, in his dietary studies in New 
York City, has carefully worked out the ratios between 
the food needed for a man at work and for the other 
possible members of his family. Accepting his ratios, 
and taking the cost of a man's food as a dollar and a 
half a week, we have the following table: 

Unit Food cost 
per week 

Man I $i-50 

Woman 0.8 1.20 

Boy, 16 to 14 years 0.8 1.20 

Girl, 16 to 14 years 0.7 1.05 

Child, 13 to 10 years 0.6 .90 

Child, 9 to 6 years 0.5 .75 

Child, 5 to 2 years 0.3 .45 

Child under 2 years 0.2 .30 

If anyone will take the pains to work out by this 
table the proper food cost per week of any needy family 
1 R. C. Chapin, The Standard of Living in New York. 



1 68 HOW TO HELP 

in which he is interested, he is very likely to find a con- 
siderable discrepancy between his figures and the amount 
actually spent. Yet this table does not allow for lux- 
uries or extravagances. It merely provides for food in 
such quantities and of such varieties as to keep the 
family strong and vigorous, enabling the workers to 
accomplish their day's work without exhaustion, per- 
mitting the children to develop normally, and providing 
for both parents and children some reserve of strength 
to fight off disease, or to combat it when once it has 
gained a hold. This it may do if administered with rea- 
sonable skill, intelligence and thrift by the housewife. 
Less than this can hardly be accepted as constituting a 
satisfactory standard in the matter of food. 

After food and shelter, comes clothing, and here again 
we have rather vague ideas both as to what is necessary 
and as to the cost at which it should be obtained. All 
would admit that clothing ought to be sufficient in quan- 
tity and in quality to answer the demands of health, 
decency and comfort. Most of us would go further and 
say that it should have sufficient relation to prevailing 
modes of dress not to make the wearer uncomfortably 
conspicuous. These conditions are by no means uni- 
versally met ; quantity, especially in the matter of under- 
wear, is apt to be insufficient, and quality inferior. 
Among the self-respecting poor a tremendous effort is 
usually made to preserve appearances, even at the cost 
of comfort and healthfulness. This feeling is sometimes 
carried to unfortunate extremes, but in itself it is entirely 
commendable. Here, as elsewhere, the life is more than 
the meat, and the family which loses its desire to keep 
up appearances is in a parlous state. In the New York 
investigation already referred to $100 a year was fixed 



STANDARD OF LIVING 169 

as the lowest possible expenditure per annum to meet 
absolute needs for a family consisting of father, mother 
and from two to four children. This makes no allow- 
ance for following fashions or seeking anything of 
beauty; it merely allows what is essential for health and 
decency. 

Fuel and light are essentials which do not admit of 
much discussion. The amount of fuel used is often in- 
adequate. Heat is economized in every way, and the 
first method which suggests itself in winter is to shut 
out all fresh and therefore cold air. Most of us feel our 
enthusiasm for ventilation declining when our rooms are 
under heated, and the poor share this general tendency. 
The normal standard of living ought to include a suffi- 
cient supply of fuel to keep a family comfortable, not 
merely enough to keep them from acute suffering. 

Furniture and household plenishings make up another 
necessity of existence. Usually a couple begin life with 
a certain supply, and the fact that they have some of the 
necessary articles is apt to blind observers to the need 
for regarding this as a permanent item in the expense 
account. Yet the original supply steadily wears out, and 
as the family increases in size more furniture is urgently 
needed. No budget even approaches completeness which 
does not permit of repairing and replacing furniture and 
furnishings as the need arises, and include some allow- 
ance for additions to the original stock. 

These items, shelter, food, clothing, fuel and light, 
and furniture, all would agree are essential to life, and 
the failure to secure them in sufficient abundance and of 
suitable quality is harmful to health and sometimes to 
character as well. But there are certain other items, by 
no means so generally recognized as indispensable, which 



170 



HOW TO HELP 



nevertheless are essential to what should be a normal 
standard of living. Car fares have become an absolutely 
necessary expense in the large cities where a worker 
cannot live near his place of employment. In all places 
there should be something for what may be called pre- 
ventive medical care, for looking after the eyes and the 
teeth, for building up a delicate child, or for giving the 
brief rest which may save an overwrought worker from 
a serious breakdown. The public schools simplify the 
question of education, yet there must be some allowance 
for instruction and training. Some provision for recrea- 
tion there ought to be, a'nd something for books and 
papers. And there should be enough to allow savings 
for future needs, enough to make it possible to lay by 
something for the expenses of birth and death, for the 
illnesses or accidents or hard times which are sure to 
come. A family which must look to the free dispensary 
for medical advice, and to the hospital or visiting nurse 
for care in illness, which must disregard the health of its 
members until they actually fall sick, and which under 
any stress of illness or accident or industrial depression, 
must look for help to others, is not self-supporting. A 
family which must put its children to work the moment 
they reach the legal age, which cannot afford to give 
them industrial training, or to let them take places which 
bring in little but give them opportunities for learning a 
trade and earning more in the future, — such a family is 
not giving its children a fair chance, nor keeping up the 
standard which it may itself have achieved or inherited. 
A normal standard must keep in view the future as well 
as the present efficiency of those affected, and must pro- 
vide moreover for some at least of those elements of 



STANDARD OF LIVING 



171 



happy and healthful living which are not immediately 
and obviously necessary. 

"I admit," says Father Ryan, in discussing this sub- 
ject, "that this minimum standard includes some things 
that are only conventionally necessary. These conven- 
tional goods must be had because they are essential to 
that self-respect which is an indispensable element of 
even the poorest and lowliest life that can be called 
decent and reasonable. So highly prized are these goods 
that most self-respecting men will secure them at the 
cost of such absolute necessities as health, efficiency and 
morality. For example, they will deprive themselves of 
some of the food and clothing that is necessary for 
physical well being rather than go without becoming 
apparel and becoming household furnishing." 1 

What income is necessary to maintain this normal 
standard below which a family may not fall without 
serious risk of deterioration? The New York investiga- 
tion already referred to gives some figures of striking 
significance. The families studied were divided into 
groups according to income, which ranged from six hun- 
dred to one thousand dollars or over. As might be 
expected in New York, overcrowding was common; 
not until the income was well past the thousand dollar 
mark did it cease to appear as a serious evil. Insufficient 
clothing and under nourishment were painfully common 
in the lower income groups. Fifty per cent, of those 
whose incomes ranged between six and eight hundred 
dollars spent less for clothing than the minimum sum 
deemed possible. Of those whose yearly receipts fell 
below six hundred dollars, three-fourths were underfed, 
while of those having between six hundred and eight 
hundred dollars a year one-third were insufficiently 

1 Rev. J. H. Ryan., N. C. C. C, 1907, p. 343- 



172 



HOW TO HELP 



nourished. In other words, overcrowding and an in- 
adequate supply of food and clothing were common so 
long as the yearly income ranged below eight hundred 
dollars. In a preliminary report, the committee in 
charge of the investigation, analyzing the budgets 
secured, declared: 

"It requires no citation of elaborate statistics to bring 
convincing proof that $600.00 to $700.00 is wholly 
inadequate to maintain a proper standard of living, and 
no self-respecting family should be asked or expected to 
live upon such an income." . . . 

"The Committee believes that with an income of 
between $700.00 and $800.00 a family can barely sup- 
port itself, provided that it is subjected to no extraordi- 
nary expenditures by reason of sickness, death or other 
untoward circumstance. Such a family can live with- 
out charitable assistance, through exceptional manage- 
ment and in the absence of emergencies." .... 

"The Committee is of the opinion that it is fairly con- 
servative in its estimate that $825.00 is sufficient for the 
average family of five individuals, comprising the father, 
mother and three children under fourteen years of age, 
to maintain a fairly proper standard of living in the 
Borough of Manhattan." 1 

Outside of New York City no such elaborate studies 
have been made, but there seems a rather general agree- 
ment that an ordinary laborer's wages are not sufficient : 
"For the great mass of unskilled workingmen," says 
John Mitchell, "residing in towns and cities with a popu- 
lation of from five thousand to one hundred thousand, 
the fair wage — a wage consistent with American stand- 
ards of living — should not be less than six hundred 
dollars a year." Father Ryan is in substantial agree- 
ment with this estimate. "Anything less than six hun- 

1 Standard of Living in New York City, pp. 278, 281. 



STANDARD OF LIVING 



173 



dred dollars a year," he declares, "is not decent living 
in any of the cities of the United States. This sum is 
probably a decent livelihood in the cities of the Southern 
States, in which fuel, clothing and food, and some other 
items of expenditure are cheaper than in the North ; it is 
possibly a decent livelihood in the moderately sized cities 
of the West, North and East; in some of the largest 
cities of the last named regions it is certainly not a decent 
livelihood." 

It is interesting to observe that according to the 
opinions of employees themselves in some of these large 
cities, six hundred dollars a year, or two dollars a day, 
is not enough. Three years ago, when the cost of living 
was slightly lower than at present, the following item 
was sent out by the Associated Press : 

Chicago, Nov. 21. — Can a teamster buy clothing and 
shoes for himself and family, pay doctors' bills, buy 
school books for his children and get the minor house- 
hold necessities for three cents a day? That is the ques- 
tion that a committee from the Oil Wagon Drivers' 
Union asked Manager Stephen N. Hurd, of the Standard 
Oil Company, yesterday. 

The oil wagon drivers receive $2 a day and are asking 
for an increase to $75 a month. They adopted a novel 
method of presenting their case to the representatives 
of the richest corporation in the world. A committee 
headed by James Duffy, the business agent of the union, 
called on Manager Hurd yesterday. 

"I want to show you what it costs the average family 
to live," said Duffy. He presented a schedule showing 
that rent, food, fuel, light and car fare cost a man $1.97 
a day. 

"We get $2 a day," said Duffy, "and I ask if you think 
that we can buy clothing and other necessary things on 
three cents a day ? Could you live on $2 a day yourself, 
Mr. Hurd?" 



1^4 HOW TO HELP 

''No, I don't believe I could, boys," said Mr. Hurd, 
"and probably you can't either, but the fact is I can get 
plenty of teamsters who are willing to work for that pay. 
That is really what governs wages more than the cost of 
living." 

But whether or not two dollars a day is sufficient ior 
the healthful support of a family, in view of the fact that, 
the average workingman, according to the United States 
census, receives less than five hundred dollars yearly, it 
is evidently too high a. standard for the charity worker 
to adopt. Nevertheless, it gives some idea of the amount 
needed. Making all due allowance for differences in 
prices, and for differences in ideals of living, it is yet 
clear that when a man with a wife and from two to four 
children dependent on him finds himself unable to earn 
more than from eight to ten dollars a week, the income 
must be increased in some way, or the family must suffer. 

Of course skilled workmen earn considerably more 
than this, but many unskilled workers, especially among 
the foreigners, earn less. A dollar and a half a day is in 
many places the outside price for unskilled labor. This 
is paid only for the time actually spent in work, and the 
loss from stoppages due to no fault of the laborer 
materially diminishes the total. What this lower wage 
means in terms of living was earnestly set forth in the 
autumn of 1908, when the brickmakers of Perth Amboy 
and neighboring towns went on strike for higher wages, 
and their spokesmen summed up the cost of their actual 
necessities : 

"These men, Father Gross says, cannot live on $1.40 
a day. With twenty-five working days a month, that 
means only $35 wages. In Perth Amboy their rent is 
$8, their food $15, their coal $5, and their clothes $10, 
a total of $38, with nothing allowed for sickness, for the 



STANDARD OF LIVING 



175 



expenses of childbirth, for tobacco or beer or newspapers 
or school books, or furniture or dishes or dues of 
church and benefit societies. A dollar and a half a day 
is the least they can do it on, he believes. Father Zie- 
linski agreed. Mr. Nanassy would place it at $1.75 a 
day." 1 

Unfortunately, wages not infrequently fall below even 
the dollar and forty cents a day which these men found 
impossibly low. The census of 1900 showed that 30.4 per 
cent, of all male workers over sixteen employed in cot- 
ton mills received less than six dollars a week, even when 
working steadily. In the shoe trades, 51 per cent, of all 
general hands and helpers received less than this amount. 
Most charity workers could report cases from their own 
experience of men earning five dollars a week or less 
when working full time, who, even at that, may have 
long periods of non-employment, with a resultant loss of 
wages. 

Sometimes the wages fall to a disastrously low figure. 
Dr. Daniels, in a study of over five hundred families in 
the tenements of New York, visited professionally, finds 
that "in no case in over five hundred and fifteen families 
were the women working other than from dire necessity. 
The average weekly income from the man's work was 
$3.81. The average rent (the one item in the living 
expenses which must be paid and paid promptly) was 
$8.99 per month. The average family to be supported 
was of four and one-half persons. As it requires more 
than two weeks wages to pay one month's rent, it is very 

1 Charities and The Commons, Dec. 12, 1008. The figures 
given are for families consisting of parents and from three to 
five children. The expenses for clothing are heavy, owing to 
the kind of work the men do, which necessitates special shoes 
and outer wear. 



176 HOW TO HELP 

evident that the women must work or the family go 
hungry. . . . The actual amount of money which 
the women earned averaged $1.04 per week. The com- 
bined income of the men and women averaged $4.85. 
The additional sources of income came from the work 
of persons under eighteen years, and from what could 
be received from boarders and lodgers. This made the 
average income from all sources, for over 515 families, 

$5.69.- 

These conditions existed among the poorest class of 
tenement workers, but they are by no means confined to 
that class. The published statements made and not con- 
tradicted at the time of the strike in the Chicago stock- 
yards showed an equally bad state of affairs. Wages 
had reached a point at which living in accordance with 
an American standard was an impossibility, and under 
the lower standard adopted, the life of the workers was 
rather indescribable in its crowding, its squalor, its lack 
of any possibility of home life, and its sacrifice of the 
children. Equally bad conditions, in regard to wages, 
are found in other industries scattered through the 
country, though, as living expenses are lighter outside 
of large cities, it is not common to find such extreme 
evidences of poverty. 

And there is still one further consideration to be taken 
into account in connection with these lower wages. It is 
impossible that the families with these meagre incomes 
should buy their food in quantity ; they have neither the 
means to buy it, nor the room to keep it. They must 
buy as they need, and as their purse permits. Because 
they must buy in such small amounts, they get poorer 
quality and pay higher prices. They have no chance for 

1 Sixth Annual Report of National Consumers' League, p. 30. 



STANDARD OF LIVING 177 

the economies in buying which are open to the more 
opulent purchaser. Their very poverty forces them 
into the most extravagant buying. "The poor house- 
wife is perhaps eager above all persons to make good 
bargains," says Dr. Forman, "but the meagreness of her 
purse prevents her from making them. . . . These 
compulsory losses occur all along the line. On clothing 
and furniture the loss varies from 20 to 40 per cent. ; on 
insurance it is always as much as 50 per cent. ; on fuel 
purchased in small quantity it is at least 25 per cent. 
What is the actual total loss which the poor sustain by 
reason of their bad bargains? Precisely to what extent 
are the poor destroyed by their poverty? A very careful 
and elaborate study enables us to give a tolerably satis- 
factory answer to this question. And the answer is a 
very cruel one : The amount of the leakage caused by 
the bad bargains which the poor are compelled to make 
is fully 10 per cent, of the income. When, therefore, we 
figure on standards of living for the very poor we must 
subtract from the normal earnings the one-tenth which 
the poor must lose simply because they are poor." 1 

It is self evident that a family cannot live properly on 
these smaller incomes, especially with this steady loss 
on every purchase reducing them still further, so various 
devices will be resorted to in order to supplement the 
man's earnings. Generally the wife will be found con- 
tributing to the income, either by going out to work or 
by taking boarders or lodgers. The children will be put 
to work as soon as the law or a lax inspector will permit. 
Those who are too young to work will be sent out to 
gather coal from the dumps or from the railroad tracks. 
The whole family will be insufficiently nourished and 

1 Dr. S. E. Forman, N. C. C. C, 1906, p. 349- 
12 



178 HOW TO HELP 

clothed, and frequent illnesses will result. Every cessa- 
tion of work for the father or mother, every accident or 
illness or sudden emergency of any kind will necessitate 
an appeal to charity. The natural effect of under-nutri- 
tion, extreme want, discouragement and too early labor 
will be to make the whole family less and less self- 
dependent, and more and more inclined to supplement 
and finally supersede their own earnings by the proceeds 
of beggary. Even when this result does not appear, the 
health and therefore the earning capacity of the family 
is likely to be constantly deteriorating, and the results 
may at any time be disastrous. 

The ill effects of such a standard of living are evident ; 
the remedy is less apparent. From the standpoint of the 
individual family it might be very well to supplement the 
man's earnings by a sufficient regular sum to make the 
family fairly comfortable, but the social effects of such 
action would certainly be calamitous, tending to reduce 
wages still further, and to bring about a long tram of 
abuses. Previous to the reform of the Poor Laws in 
1834 England tried the experiment of supplementing 
wages of able-bodied laborers by poor relief, and her 
experience was decisive. No one who looks beyond the 
immediate relief of a particular family and who takes 
into account the welfare of society, and more especially 
of the poor as a class, would be willing to see that device 
reintroduced. 

One remedy which is occasionally highly recommended 
is to teach the poor greater thrift. We hear much about 
the extravagance of the poor, of the recklessness with 
which they waste their pennies, of their fondness for 
cheap and useless purchases, of their ignorance of food 
values, and the consequent waste in their buying and 



STANDARD OF LIVING 179 

cooking, of their persistent inclination for buying on the 
instalment plan, and of their general tendency to throw 
away money in every direction. There is certainly a 
modicum of truth in all this. Some of the poor are 
unquestionably extravagant. Many could be helped by 
a better knowledge of the nutritive values of different 
foods, and of the best methods of preparing and serving 
them. Yet in many cases, also, the poor practice a degree 
of intelligent thrift which would astonish their critics. 
And it must always be remembered, too, that the effort 
to live on an inadequate amount leads inevitably to 
physical and often to moral deterioration. An Italian 
family newly arrived will lay by money under conditions 
in which an American laborer's family would be unable 
to live without help. But the Italians will do it by keep- 
ing their children away from school that they may work ; 
by living on a wholly insufficient diet, so that their chil- 
dren become undersized and rickety ; by taking in 
boarders and lodgers to the destruction of family 
privacy ; by devoting the whole force and intelligence of 
the whole family to the one purpose of living cheaply 
and saving money. This course raises the individual 
family above want, but it does not produce good citizens. 
Few would be willing to see Americans adopt the foreign 
standard of living; it is decidedly better that our stand- 
ards, involving education and healthful nurture for the 
children, reasonable comforts and leisure and oppor- 
tunities for recreation for all the family, should be 
adopted by the foreigners. On occasion, instruction in 
the wise use of money may help to lessen the discrepancy 
between actual income and necessary outgo, but in the 
cases of families with the wholly inadequate incomes we 
are now considering, it can never be anything but a more 



180 HOW TO HELP 

or less ineffectual palliative. In order to meet the diffi- 
culty fully, the family income must be increased in some 
way. 

The remedy which naturally suggests itself is to 
secure better paid work for the man. The unskilled 
laborer has very little power of looking over the field of 
employment, finding where higher rates of wages pre- 
vail, and transferring himself to a more profitable in- 
dustry. Where he is he remains, helpless to improve 
his condition, although elsewhere there may be crying 
need for the labor he can furnish. Here the visitor can 
render valuable help, finding out in what industries labor 
is more needed, and whether the unskilled laborer can 
in some other form of employment gain better wages or 
more regular work. 

Sometimes it may be well to remove the family to 
another location where manual labor is not so over plen- 
tiful. In many parts of the country there is a demand 
for farm labor for a considerable portion of the year, 
while the cost of living is apt to be much less than in a 
city. If the man is willing and able to undertake farm 
work it is well worth while trying to look up some open- 
ing of this kind. In some cases it has been found pos- 
sible to set up the family in a little place of their own, 
advancing the necessary capital, to be repaid as the 
venture succeeds. This would not be a generally appli- 
cable method, but works well with an occasional family 
accustomed to the intensive cultivation of the soil, and 
knowing, too, how to avail themselves of the services of 
every member of the family. 

Frequently the family will be found to have no idea 
of adaptation to a country life, but may be advanta- 
geously removed to some other city or town where wages 



STANDARD OF LIVING 181 

range higher, or where cost of living is lower, or where 
they have relatives with whom they may join forces. In 
any case in which such transportation is contemplated, 
there should be very careful investigation of the fitness 
of the family for the new environment, and no steps 
should be taken unless it is morally certain that their 
condition will be improved. There is a certain tendency 
to feel that a difficulty is settled when it is shifted to 
other hands which sometimes prompts a charitable 
worker to transfer a family without sufficient justification 
for doing so. Any attempt at establishing families else- 
where may, unless carefully managed, result merely in 
changing the sources from which they must receive 
help without in the least diminishing their need of help. 
This is not only useless to them, but is positively unfair 
to the place to which they are transferred. 

If it is impossible to put the family in a better location 
or to secure better paid work for the man where he is, 
it may be advisable to try to find work for the wife, 
either inside or outside of her own home. This should 
always be recognized as an unfortunate and socially 
objectionable course. The entrance of married women 
into the field of competitive employment tends to injure 
the home and to drag down wages still lower. When 
work is procured which a woman may do within her 
own home, the latter tendency is strengthened and the 
former but little diminished. It may even be increased.. 
At times there has seemed to be a curious idea among- 
charitable workers that the home was somehow preserved! 
inviolate if only a woman could take back to it the work 
which should absorb her full time. The history of the 
sweating trades shows how this works out. Apart from 
the question of wages, it is evident that if a woman is 



182 HOW TO HELP 

doing someone else's work she cannot be doing her own, 
and the mere fact that she does this stranger's work 
within the walls of her own tenement carries with it no 
sanctifying virtue. While she is busy with it the chil- 
dren must inevitably be neglected, or, worse still, pressed 
into service as additional workers at a pitifully early age. 
Child labor in the home presents one of the most diffi- 
cult problems of the whole child labor question, since it 
is so difficult for officials either to discover or to prevent 
it. Yet whenever a woman takes home work at which a 
child may be made useful — and children can be pressed 
into a surprisingly wide range of activities — there is an 
immediate temptation to withdraw the children from 
school and to set them to work. On the whole, the only 
real advantage of a woman's taking work home seems 
to be that she may be more easily reached in case of any 
accident among the children requiring her immediate 
presence, and this possible benefit is offset by such seri- 
ous disadvantages that a visitor may well hesitate before 
securing for her such work. 

In families of the kind under consideration the chil- 
dren may and should be trained to feel a sense of 
responsibility, and to help in all suitable ways. Great 
care should be taken, however, that the need for their 
earnings is not allowed to overshadow their ultimate 
welfare. It is the visitor's special duty to see that they 
are not forced into premature employment, or into work 
unhealthful in its nature or demoralizing in its con- 
ditions. 

In many of these families no satisfactory solution of 
the problem will be found until several of the children 
have reached a working age, when the income is likely 
to be increased by their earnings to an adequate figure. 



STANDARD OF LIVING 183 

Until that time comes, help will probably be required 
from time to time, but the visitor's energies should be 
devoted to making these occasions as few as may be, to 
helping the family to make the most of what they have, 
to discovering resources they had not thought of, and to 
helping them, as far as possible, to pass unharmed 
through the trying period of the lean years. 

The whole subject of the standard of living attain- 
able by the more poorly paid workers demands more 
careful consideration than it has yet received. It is only 
within a few years past that we have waked up to the 
fact that an able-bodied man's normal earning capacity 
may not be sufficient to support his family, and that with- 
out either intemperance, inefficiency or any other fault 
on the wage-earner's part, he may yet find himself with 
his wife and children living always on the border line 
of acute poverty, insufficiently nourished, lacking proper 
housing and clothing, unable to provide for the future 
and liable under any stress of illness, accident or lack of 
work to be forced into complete or partial dependence. 
The situation is an extremely difficult one to meet, 
because it is due to both individual and social causes, 
and while charity workers may do much to remove the 
personal defects or accidental circumstances which con- 
sign onei particular workingman to the ranks of the 
poorly paid, they are as unable as the man himself to 
grapple singlehanded with the social causes which are 
forcing hundreds into those ranks. It is conceivable 
that society may at some future time be so ordered that 
every honest, sober and industrious man, not physically 
defective or incapacitated, may be able to earn ,a fair 
living for his family without forcing his wife or little 
children to enter the industrial field to help out the defi- 



184 HOW TO HELP 

ciencies of his income, but that time is not yet very clearly 
discernible. Its coming will involve a considerable read- 
justment of the industrial system, which can be brought 
about, if it is ever accomplished, only by a union of many 
forces, acting on a basis of much wider information than 
we at present possess. And here the charity worker can 
render a double service : he can help the need of a 
specific family, and by studying its possible income, and 
the standard of living which can be maintained on that 
income, he may add to the fund of knowledge on which 
any effective remedial measures must eventually be 
based. One of the leaders in the effort to secure a living 
wage pleads for this individual study as one of the most 
hopeful means of finally bringing a normal standard of 
living within the reach of all : 

"Finally, a definite concept of the minimum normal 
standard of living, together with an approximate esti- 
mate of the number of persons who fail to reach that 
standard, are indispensable to any intelligent and ef- 
fective effort to ascertain and abolish the principal social 
cause of dependency. I refer, of course, to insufficient 
wages. Possessing this knowledge, the members of 
charity organizations, and all who speak or write on the 
problem of dependency, can accomplish a splendid work 
of education. They can bring home to well meaning 
but thoughtless employers some idea of the amount of 
poverty that is due to their failure to pay living wages: 
they can help very materially to bring upon employers 
who are not well meaning the condemnation of public 
opinion ; they can contribute to the enactment of laws 
which directly or indirectly will enforce an adequate 
standard of compensation and of living; they can edu- 
cate the whole public into a more adequate conception of 
the proportion of poverty which is due to social causes, 
and out of the complacent notion, which is still all too 
common, that the poverty stricken have only themselves 
to blame." 1 
*Rev. J. A. Ryan, N. C C. C, 1907, P- 346. 



CHAPTER XV 



WIDOWS WITH CHILDREN 



As has been said before, relief should never be used 
as a substitute for fair wages. Ordinarily when a family 
contains an able-bodied man, on whom the responsibility 
of its support should fall, philanthropy should not assume 
the burden. His inability to support it properly may be 
due to social causes for which he is not responsible, but 
the attempt to supplement his wages by alms-giving is 
sure to result disastrously for society as a whole. When, 
however, a family is without male support, and conse- 
quently in want, this objection does not hold, and fre- 
quently relief extending through a period of years is the 
only proper solution of the difficulty. 

The most common instance calling for such treatment 
is the case of the widow or permanently deserted wife, 
left with children too small to help in the family support. 
It is obvious that she cannot alone discharge satisfac- 
torily the duties which formerly occupied both her hus- 
band and herself. If she makes the family living she 
cannot administer the income as she did before. She 
cannot be both wage-earner and home-maker without 
neglecting one or the other of these functions. Gener- 
ally she tries to fulfil both, with the result that neither is 
adequately accomplished, the children are ill-nourished 
and too often of necessity run wild, the mother is over- 
taxed and prematurely worn out, and charity must be 
asked again and again in every time of special stress. 

To obviate these evils it is sometimes urged that when 

185 



1 86 HOW TO HELP 

a woman is left with a family of small children, her 
burden should be permanently lightened by removing 
several of the children, leaving with her only such a 
number as she can properly care for without being over- 
worked. Ordinarily it is deemed best to limit the num- 
ber left with her to two, unless she is a woman of unusual 
vigor of body and very anxious to keep her children with 
her. The children who are taken may be placed with 
relatives, if this can be managed, may be given up for 
adoption, or may be put into institutions. When this 
plan is followed it is best to arrange for their permanent 
care. As a rule nothing is gained by letting them be 
taken by neighbors or relatives who will undertake their 
charge for a short time, but who cannot provide for 
their future. 

There are several objections to this disposition of the 
case. If the mother is a fit person to have the custody 
of her children, poverty is not a valid reason for taking 
them from her. An institution, no matter how good, is 
a poor place for a child. Even a very poor home offers 
a better chance for its development than an excellent 
institution. For the normal child, family life is the most 
important element in its training, and while it may secure 
this if placed in a home not its own, it cannot secure 
the mother care and mother love to which it has a right. 

Sometimes when a woman is thus left, it is possible 
to find among her relatives or friends someone with 
whom she may advantageously join forces. She may 
have a single or a widowed and childless sister or cousin 
who will keep house for her, coming into the establish- 
ment simply as a member of the group, without any 
definite compensation from or to either side, turning into 
the common fund anything she may earn outside the 



WIDOWS WITH CHILDREN 187 

house. Sometimes some elderly woman will be glad to 
come in and act as caretaker for the sake of a home. 
These arrangements, however, are very apt to prove 
unsatisfactory unless they are undertaken on the initia- 
tive of the parties immediately concerned. It amounts 
so nearly to having two families under one roof that 
there are innumerable chances of discord, and the worker 
who, knowing some widow with young children and 
knowing also some single woman in much need of a 
home, brings the two together, will find it wise to be 
prepared for friction. 

Where it is impossible to make any combination of this 
kind, one of two alternatives is often urged — either 
that the woman shall take work which she can do at 
home, or that she shall place the children in a day nursery 
and undertake regular employment without her home. 
Neither of these is an ideal solution of the situation, but 
of the two perhaps the former is the more objectionable. 

In too many places "bringing home work" means 
entering the ranks of the sweated industries. The num- 
ber of employments which can be carried on in a tene- 
ment home without special machinery and without 
trained oversight is limited, and nearly all have fallen 
into the hands of contractors who know how to diminish 
the returns to the worker to the lowest possible figure. 
One essential of trades thus carried on is that the work 
shall be capable of subdivision into the simplest forms 
of employment, each of which may be assigned to a dif- 
ferent worker, who learns to do that one thing with great 
rapidity, but is unable to take up any other kind of 
industry. The simplicity of the work thus reduced to its 
elements, the consequent ease with which workers 
capable of doing it may be found among the newly 



188 HOW TO HELP 

arrived immigrants, the lack of any training received by 
the worker which might enable her to turn to another 
trade, and the helplessness resulting from this lack of 
adaptability, all tend to make it possible for the em- 
ployer to cut wages lower and lower, without any pos- 
sibility of effective protest on the part of the employees. 
Accordingly we find that in these industries wages run 
down to incredibly low figures. 

"The amount of pay received," reports one investi- 
gator of such trades, "varies with the kind of work from 
one and one-half cents an hour to ten cents — very rarely 
more. The little children, according to their ages, earn 
from fifty cents to two dollars a week." 

In the last sentence the writer touches on one of the 
worst features of these so-called home industries — the 
ease with which they lend themselves, almost inevitably, 
to the premature employment of children. When a 
woman working with all her energy ten or twelve hours 
a day, is able to earn only from fifty cents to a dollar a 
day — and in many of the sweated trades she cannot aver- 
age this — the income must be increased somehow, and 
the easiest way is to put the children to work. The 
mother may wish with all her heart to give them an 
education and a chance in life, but what is she to do? 
The rent must be paid and food and clothing provided. 
Her own labor is insufficient to meet the need; the chil- 
dren are at hand, and work, so simple and mechanical 
that even the littlest tots can do something, is waiting. 
Factory inspector and truant officer are not apt to 
penetrate to the home; there is no minimum age for 
beginning work there, and no restriction of hours of 
labor. And so in the place which should be his citadel 
of safety, the child is exposed to long hours of deaden- 



WIDOWS WITH CHILDREN 



189 



ing, monotonous toil, unprotected by any of the safe- 
guards which enlightened legislation throws around those 
employed in the world outside. 

In smaller communities where the sweated trades are 
unknown, and taking work home usually means doing 
the washing or sewing for better off neighbors, many 
of the objections to bringing work into the house dis- 
appear. Then the principal matter to be considered is 
whether the mother is obliged to give so much of her 
time to this work that she must neglect her children, 
and whether the nature of the work involves unhealthy 
or dangerous conditions. Here again, however, the 
very fact of bringing work into the home constitutes a 
temptation to keep the older children out of school to 
help. The work which they will be set to is far less 
exacting and done under far better conditions than in the 
case of the industries above referred to, but it is not 
desirable that they should be withdrawn from school 
and deprived of that minimum of education which the 
state is supposed to ensure to every child. A visitor 
interested in a family in which the mother is thus sup- 
porting her children will do well to make friends with 
the school teachers of the little ones, and to rouse their 
interest in keeping the children in regular attendance. 

The second plan mentioned, placing the children in 
a day nursery while the mother goes to work, is free 
from the special objections applying to the first plan. 
The children are well looked after, those who are old 
enough to be in school are sent there during school 
hours, and indirectly both mother and children may 
learn many things about the possibilities of cleanliness 
and of home-making. The principal question about this 
method, is whether it is really possible for the average 



190 HOW TO HELP 

woman to support her children and make a home for 
them without either neglecting them or over-working 
herself to the point of exhaustion. The wages of work- 
ing women are small at best, and the functions of bread- 
winner and home-maker are each in themselves sufficient 
to occupy a woman's time and strength. The effort to 
combine them not infrequently results disastrously. 

The most satisfactory method, from the point of view 
of results, of dealing with a family thus left without its 
normal supporter, is to make the usual preliminary 
investigation, to find out what the necessary cost of 
living should be, what portion of this can be supplied by 
relatives or from any source on which there is a natural 
claim, what part the woman can make up herself with- 
out undertaking an unduly heavy task, and then to sup- 
ply whatever deficiency may exist by an allowance paid 
with unfailing regularity at stated periods. It should 
be understood that when the oldest child reaches a work- 
ing age this allowance or pension will be decreased by a 
certain amount, that an equal reduction will be made 
when the second child reaches this age, and so on, until 
by the time the family reaches a stare at which it should 
be self-supporting the pension will have stopped alto- 
gether. 

In recent years there has been considerable discussion 
as to how this pension should be secured. Some work- 
ers strongly advocate that it should be provided from 
public funds, the state or the city bearing the whole 
burden. "It is the duty of the community to support 
its dependents," they argue, "and it is its interest to 
support them in the best way. It is far better and, in 
the end, cheaper, to pension the mother, thus permitting 
her to give her whole time and attention to training her 



WIDOWS WITH CHILDREN 



191 



children to become good and useful citizens, than to 
escape the present cost of this method and later pay it 
tenfold in the maintenance of hospitals and reforma- 
tories and prisons. It is generally admitted that the 
pension system is the best way of providing for widows 
with children to care for; why should its cost be borne 
by private citizens when its benefits are enjoyed by the 
community as a whole? The widow who brings up her 
children successfully is rendering a distinct and valuable 
service to the state, and one which she cannot perform 
if her time and strength must go to making a living for 
them. Why should not the state recognize this service 
and pay her for it, as it would if she devoted herself to 
counting bills in the treasury department, or to scrub- 
bing floors in the public buildings?" 

Whatever force there may be in these arguments, they 
are at present academic rather than practical. No com- 
munity furnishes such pensions from public funds, nor 
is there any strong likelihood that such a system will be 
adopted in the near future. It is true that many com- 
munities provide a certain amount of public outdoor 
relief for families in such a situation, but this is far from 
being an approximation to the system suggested. On 
the whole, it is probably fortunate that the community 
as a whole is not prepared to assume this responsibility. 
Such help given from public funds would be open to all 
the usual objections to outdoor relief, with one or two 
additional drawbacks peculiar to itself. For its suc- 
cessful administration the plan needs the flexibility, the 
adaptation to individual circumstances, the close knowl- 
edge of its beneficiaries and warm interest in their wel- 
fare which can better be obtained through private than 
through public charity. Theoretically it is desirable, 



192 HOW TO HELP 

and practically it is necessary that the pension should be 
secured from private sources. 

The advantage of the pension system is that it pro- 
vides permanent and adequate relief without encourag- 
ing habits of dependence. The woman knows exactly 
what she has to rely on and for how long. She is not 
relieved from the duty of exerting herself, but is secured 
against the necessity of toil to the point of exhaustion, 
and the more wearing anxiety of never knowing from 
week to week whether income will equal outgo. She is 
not taught dependence, because the pension supplies 
only what she herself cannot provide, and is withdrawn 
in proportion as her family becomes able to meet its own 
needs. Moreover, it makes it practically certain that the 
visitor who provides or administers the pension will 
keep in close and friendly touch with the family, so that 
nothing is likely to go very far wrong with them with- 
out the difficulty becoming known and the trouble being 
checked in its incipiency. 

Naturally such an arrangement must be carried out 
with firmness and discretion if the best results are to be 
secured. After the amount needed has been decided 
upon, additional help should not be given, except under 
the stress of very unusual misfortune. If the woman in 
whose behalf such a plan is undertaken is naturally 
inclined to be dependent and shiftless, she will certainly 
think that additional aid can and should be secured from 
the same source whenever she does not feel like living 
up to her part of the agreement. If she finds that by 
neglecting her work and so getting into want, or by 
spending recklessly and running herself into debt, she 
can secure whatever is needed to extricate her, she will 
probably continue to get into a long series of difficulties, 



WIDOWS WITH CHILDREN 



193 



and the nominal agreement becomes a mere farce, cover- 
ing an ill-regulated and injudicious bestowal of alms. 
But if her first experiment meets with no success and 
she is left to get herself out of the trouble she has 
brought upon herself, the probability is that it will not 
recur. Ordinarily, however, the pension plan is not 
likely to be attempted except with a woman of whose 
character the workers are sure, and in practice the prob- 
lem discussed does not often arise. 

A theoretical objection frequently brought against the 
pension method of relief is that it may, by freeing the 
average man from the fear of want for his family in 
case of his death, remove an incentive to thrift. This 
objection seems a trifle far-fetched. In many cases a 
working man's wages are such that, if he takes proper 
care of his family, it is not possible for him to make any 
provision against the future, and that duty is necessarily 
postponed until the older children reach an age at which 
they can add to the family income. Then, too, the dif- 
ficulty of securing an adequate pension from private 
sources is so great that the system is not likely for some 
time to come to be sufficiently common to form a factor 
in the average man's calculations. Even were it other- 
wise, it is obvious that a family cannot be left to 
complete destitution for the sake of inculcating thrift 
in the fathers of other families. In some way or other 
widows and children must be aided. The question is 
not whether they shall be given help, but simply in 
what way the help shall be given, and this being so, 
the welfare of society as a whole and the future of the 
particular family are alike best served by providing 
relief in the most effective and permanently beneficial 
manner. 
13 



l 9 4 HOW TO HELP 

A very serious practical objection to the plan is found 
in the difficulty of providing such a pension. Many per- 
sons who are willing to give freely when they find a 
family in the stress of immediate want are entirely un- 
willing to undertake a systematic and continuous plan 
of assistance. It is always a troublesome task to secure 
adequate relief for a given case of want, and when this 
relief must be continued through a period of years the 
difficulty increases enormously. Often it will be found 
impossible to secure the amount needed. In that case, 
as in so many others, it is necessary to resort to other 
devices, recognizing that one is not doing the best thing, 
but only the best one can. Whatever help is decided 
upon, a strong effort should be made to give it regularly, 
that the family may know what they have to count on, 
and may not feel that they may fall back on an indefinite 
possibility of help in any emergency. 

A visitor keeping in close and friendly touch with 
such a family may find numerous ways of helping both 
mother and children, especially as the latter grow old 
enough to become wage-earners. The usual tendency to 
set children to work at anything, no matter what, at 
which they can earn a few cents is of course intensified 
when the need for the few cents is urgent and unceasing. 
The mother's vision is too often limited to the returns, 
and her lack of knowledge of general conditions prevents 
her from seeing either the harmfulness of a given pur- 
suit, or the greater results to be attained by deferring a 
little longer the earning period. On such matters the 
visitor's wider experience and greater breadth of view 
should be helpful. A family left in this position must 
inevitably go through a hard and anxious period while 
the children are young. The visitor must share these 



WIDOWS WITH CHILDREN 195 

anxieties to an extent which will make the work often 
painful as well as perplexing, but there are few situa- 
tions in which advice and assistance will be more helpful, 
or sympathy and friendship more valued or productive 
of results for both sides. 



CHAPTER XVI 



CONCERNING CHILDREN 



Throughout the preceding chapters a good deal has 
been said in regard to the children of poorer families, 
but the subject is of sufficient importance to justify 
more extended discussion. As a general rule, when, 
either through poverty or misconduct, a family is broken 
up, the public authorities are called upon to care for the 
children, so that the individual worker is not often con- 
fronted with the problem of providing for homeless 
children. Before, however, a family reaches the point 
of breaking up, much is often needed and much can be 
done for the children within their own home. Even 
when the parents are respectable and kindly intentioned 
people, they may through ignorance allow their chil- 
dren to suffer cruelly from disease or lack of attention, 
and in preventing such neglect a visitor may render an 
important service. 

In a few cities a system of medical inspection of all 
school children has been established. Where this is not 
the case, the visitor should secure some information as 
to the symptoms of the commoner diseases from which 
children are apt to suffer. If a child is reported dull or 
troublesome in school, it is important to find out whether 
it is not suffering from defective sight or hearing, or 
from adenoid growths. Few people realize what serious 
results may arise from the lack of a little intelligent care 
in time. Every professional charity worker could tell 
of children who have lost sight or hearing for life 

196 



CONCERNING CHILDREN 197 

because the symptoms of disease were not recognized. 
Often a child will be backward at school, will be blamed 
and reprimanded, perhaps even punished, when as a 
matter of fact it is unable to see the exercises assigned 
or to explain what is its trouble. The teachers are fre- 
quently too overworked to give the individual attention 
necessary to find out what is the matter, the parents are 
unaware of the possibilities involved, and by the time 
the disease has gone so far that it announces itself 
unmistakably, the sight may be lost or damaged irrev- 
ocably. To discover troubles of this kind the visitor 
may easily secure simple tests for sight and hearing, and 
introduce these in the form of a game from time to 
time. In case of bad reports from school it will be safe, 
at least, to take the child to a dispensary or to the out- 
patient department of some hospital for examination. 

The common diseases of childhood are easily recog- 
nized, but some of the more serious troubles may pre- 
sent themselves in a less apparent form. "I began my 
work among families/' said one visitor, "by nearly let- 
ting a child die before my eyes because I didn't know 
the symptoms of Pott's disease of the spine. The child 
was failing steadily, but the local doctor said it was some 
common childish ailment for which he kept treating her, 
and I supposed he knew. For two years I was visiting 
the family and the child grew thinner and paler and 
feebler, till she was hardly able to move about, and then 
by mere accident I learned that severe pains in the 
abdomen might mean spinal trouble. I got her to a 
doctor who knew something, and then I went to him 
myself and asked for some indications of the diseases 
I might count on meeting. Now, if a child is ailing and 
I don't know what is the matter, I don't waste any time 



198 HOW TO HELP 

thinking it isn't important; I get some good doctor to 
examine her and find out." 

One line along which visitors in very poor families 
are apt to find sufficient work to be done is in seeing 
that the babies have a chance. The appalling death rate 
among the babies of the tenements, especially in the 
summer months, is largely due to entirely preventable 
diseases, but unfortunately the fight against such dis- 
eases requires both knowledge and means which are apt 
to be lacking among the poor. Money and science com- 
bined work wonders in the way of reducing infant 
mortality, and the visitor can do much in securing their 
advantages for the babies who too often are sacrificed 
to ignorance. Exactly what can be done depends largely 
on the particular place, as opportunities differ from city 
to city. 

There is one highly disadvantageous condition which 
the visitor can probably do but little to modify. It is a 
well established fact that babies thrive best on their 
mother's milk, and that wherever mothers are engaged 
in occupations which prevent them from nursing their 
children, there is a high death rate among the little ones. 
Fall River, for instance, where a large proportion of 
the married women work in the mills, has an abnormally 
high death rate among babies under one year old — over 
four hundred to the thousand. In another way the same 
thing is shown by the fact that whenever any wide- 
spread cause, even though it be a calamity, sets women 
free from their outside occupations and enables them 
to nurse their babies, the infantile death rate falls. The 
siege of Paris and the cotton famine in the Lancashire 
mill districts during our own Civil War gave striking 
illustrations of this. In both cases there was widespread 



CONCERNING CHILDREN 



199 



and intense distress, but the mothers who could no 
longer follow their outside work, could nurse their 
babies, and the death rate of the little ones fell off 
noticeably. Ordinarily, however, mothers with little 
babies are not at work outside of their homes as a mat- 
ter of choice, and the situation cannot be remedied by 
advice, however good. Occasionally mothers will be 
found who, although not hindered by any occupation, 
do not nurse their babies because they do not wish to, 
and then the most urgent remonstrance and persuasion 
should be exerted to induce them to change their atti- 
tude. It cannot be too strongly emphasized that the 
breast-fed baby has an immensely better chance for life 
than the bottle-fed, and the woman who, being able to 
nurse her baby, refuses to do so, runs a serious risk of 
becoming responsible for its death. 

Among the poor, however, it will more often be found 
that the refusal is not voluntary, and that the mother 
is not nursing her child because she is really unable to 
do so. It is pretty generally admitted that the ability 
to nurse their children is becoming less and less com- 
mon among the women of today, in all ranks. Scien- 
tists are not agreed upon the cause of this phenomenon, 
but when it is found among the very poor, it is well 
worth while to enquire into the mother's dietary, and 
see if her inability is not closely connected with her own 
underfed condition. That this is by no means an impos- 
sible contingency is proved by the experience of the 
New York Milk Committee, which, during the summer 
of 1908, dealt with nearly a thousand babies in all 
stages of debility and disease — and saved nearly all of 
them. Among the exceedingly poor, they found that 
in many cases the mother failed to nurse the child 



200 HOW TO HELP 

simply because she was too ill fed herself. One baby, 
for instance, was brought to them apparently at the 
point of death, so emaciated that the mother was not 
willing it should be weighed before the other women 
present. 

"In the twelve weeks of his existence young Barry 
had been fed on almost everything except milk. The 
mother ate almost nothing herself. The husband, who 
was a laborer, had to eat because he worked. The older 
children had to eat, because they went to school. The 
baby ate the scraps. This left nothing much for the 
mother. That is the way with the poor, and it accounts 
for thousands of babies born only to die." 

When the mother was furnished with proper food in 
sufficient quantities, the baby promptly began to im- 
prove, until by the end of the season's work he had 
reached a really creditable condition and had a reason- 
able chance of living out to the end the life which when 
he was first brought to the station had not seemed worth 
a week's purchase. 

If the mother is really unable to nurse the baby, and 
it does not thrive on artificial feeding, the first step 
should be an investigation into the kind of milk it is 
getting. Milk is one of the most effective carriers of 
disease germs known, and the ordinary milk of com- 
merce comes to the home literally teeming with possi- 
bilities of danger for the baby's delicate organism. The 
problem of infant mortality is, to a large extent, the 
problem of securing pure, clean milk : 

"That impure and infected milk is one of the chief 
factors in the causation of excessive infant mortality is 
not questioned, so far as I am aware, by a single living 
authority. Whether we take Russia with its terrible 
death rate of 272 per thousand of infants under one 



CONCERNING CHILDREN 2 OI 

year old, Austria with its 227 per thousand, or New 
Zealand with its 82 per thousand, it is universally ad- 
mitted that the frightful mortality among bottle-fed 
babies as compared with breast nurslings, is due largely 
to diarrhoeal diseases caused by impure and contami- 
nated milk, or to other diseases caused by the ingestion 
of pathogenic bacilli contained in milk drawn from 
infected cows, or handled by infected persons." 1 

Milk can be produced which is to all practical intents 
free from bacteria, milk which is a marvel of purity and 
sweetness, but its price puts it beyond the reach of the 
poor, even if they know of its existence and where to 
get it. In some places, steps have been taken to see that 
such milk reaches the children who most need it. The 
pure milk depots in New York, maintained by Nathan 
Strauss, are perhaps the best known agencies of this 
kind. In some cities, the health authorities undertake to 
see that no milk under a certain moderate standard of 
purity shall be sold. In others, elaborate campaigns are 
carried on, not only to provide pure milk, but to see that 
where small babies are concerned, the milk furnished 
shall be exactly what that particular infant needs ; — for 
it frequently happens with a young baby that milk, no 
matter how pure, must be modified to suit its individual 
constitution. 

In over twenty cities campaigns of this kind have 
been undertaken, and the number is increasing with each 
summer. Details differ from place to place, but in the 
main the work done by the New York Milk Committee, 
which was organized in 1908 to grapple with the in- 
fantile death rate of the tenement districts through the 
summer months, is typical of all. Milk depots are 

1 Spargo, The Common Sense of the Milk Question, p. 158. 



202 HOW TO HELP 

opened in regions where infant mortality is likely to be 
greatest, and milk of the purest quality provided. This 
is sold at cost to those who can pay the price, below 
cost to those who cannot, or given to those who cannot 
pay anything. Older babies and young children flourish 
on this milk, but for the very young babies, and babies 
who are already ill, various modifications are required, 
so doctors are secured, and a staff of trained nurses. 
Each baby is examined, when the application for milk 
is first made, by the doctor, who prescribes for it such 
a modification of the milk as will best suit that particu- 
lar baby. Further, he gives the mother such instruc- 
tion as she seems to need about the feeding and general 
care of the child. To make sure that these instructions 
are understood and followed, the trained nurses, who 
act as the doctor's assistants, and preside over the dis- 
tribution of the milk, visit each family and make sure 
that the child is not suffering from the parents' mis- 
taken ideas of hygiene. The baby is weighed weekly, 
and if it does not show a satisfactory gain, the doctor 
is called upon to examine and prescribe again. Often, 
the plan includes a weekly or monthly meeting of the 
mothers, when the doctor addresses them, giving ele- 
mentary instruction in personal and infant hygiene, and 
quite informally the nurses are giving such instruction 
all the time as the mothers come for their milk, or crowd 
around to see their babies weighed and compare notes 
as to improvement. Provision of pure, clean milk, 
modified according to a doctor's prescription to suit the 
individual baby, home supervision by trained nurses, 
and regular consultations or classes at which the doctor 
or nurse meets the mothers as a group and discusses the 
principles of hygiene of most importance to them — these 



CONCERNING CHILDREN 203 

are the leading features of the plan wherever tried. 
Sometimes the work is carried on by private philan- 
thropy, sometimes by the municipality, sometimes by a 
combination of forces, but wherever it has been tried, 
the results have been striking. Deaths among young 
babies have fallen off, and the general level of health has 
risen. Incidentally, what the mothers learn benefits the 
whole family, and the city which has once tried such a 
plan will usually not be willing to drop it. 

In any city where such work is carried on, the visitor 
interested in a sickly baby need only learn the location 
of the nearest milk depot and make sure that the mother 
carries the child there. Where, however, there is no 
such work, it is by no means easy to ensure the little one 
a reasonable chance for existence. Generally, however, 
it will be found that there is purer milk to be had than 
the children of the tenement habitually get. It may be 
known as certified milk, or babies' milk, or by some 
other name indicating its higher grade, and it is sold at 
a correspondingly higher price. If a bottle-fed baby is 
not thriving, the best course is to consult a doctor and 
make sure what modification of milk is needed for it, 
and then to see that this is supplied. If this cannot be 
done, the next best thing is to secure the higher grade 
milk, even unmodified, and see if it will not meet the 
difficulty. If the parents cannot pay the higher price, 
the difference should be made up for them, just as medi- 
cine would be supplied if they could not buy it when 
the baby was acutely ill. 

If pure milk is not to be had, or if money to pay for 
it cannot be raised, the visitor has comparatively little 
chance to be of service. One thing, however, should 
always be looked to when a bottle-fed baby is not thriv- 



204 HOW TO HELP 

ing: the nursing bottle should be examined. There is a 
certain kind of nursing bottle in high favor among some 
of the foreign mothers, in which the baby sucks the milk 
through a long, slender rubber tube. This particular 
form of bottle, or rather, of nipple, is simply murderous. 
It is difficult to keep sweet, under the best of circum- 
stances, and among the ignorant mothers, who chiefly 
make use of it, it is practically never really cleaned. It 
is the finest imaginable breeding ground for bacilli of 
every sort, and wherever the visitor finds it in use, 
trouble may be looked for. In addition to making sure 
that no such objectionable contrivances are in use, the 
visitor may also find that a little instruction may not 
come amiss in the art of pasteurizing milk, of keeping it 
as uncontaminated as possible under the conditions of a 
tenement home, and of keeping the baby's bottles clean 
and sweet. A few suggestions as to regularity of feed- 
ing may perhaps bear fruit, and a protest against the 
too common practice of sharing the family bill of fare 
with babies of tender years may do good. It is not well, 
however, to go much beyond such elementary principles 
without consulting a doctor, and one of a visitor's most 
important services may be the insistance upon medical 
advice at an early stage if the baby shows symptoms of 
illness which do not yield at once to simple treatment. 

In cases in which a child's physical welfare is cared 
for by the parents to the extent of their ability a visitor 
may nevertheless be of service by suggesting possibili- 
ties which lie without the range of their knowledge. 
Among the more self-respecting poor there is sometimes 
much ignorance of the work done in the way of summer 
outings, vacation schools, holiday houses and the like. 
People of this class are not likely to follow up such 



CONCERNING CHILDREN 205 

chances for their children to get a change and oppor- 
tunities of beneficial enjoyment, and they are sometimes 
even disposed to refuse to let the children take advan- 
tage of them when presented, fearing that they are 
tinged with patronage, or that accepting means giving 
up the independence they have struggled so proudly to 
maintain. A little tact and common sense on the visi- 
tor's part will often overcome this objection. The visi- 
tor may also find occasion for introducing the children 
to the public buildings of the city, and letting them 
know what resources they have at hand in the way of 
public libraries, picture galleries, museums, and so on. 
The very people to whom these would be of most benefit 
are frequently unaware of their existence. Through 
the children . the whole family may become interested, 
but even if this does not follow, the work is well worth 
doing for the sake of the children alone. 

In families in which the parents are intemperate or 
of dubious morality the visitor's task is likely to be more 
delicate and more serious. It is a general and good 
principle that when the surroundings of a home are 
injurious morally, the law should be invoked and the 
children removed. Like many other good principles 
this is difficult of realization. A visitor may be certain 
that a home is gravely injurious to a child morally, yet 
be unable to secure the legal evidence which would 
justify forcible interference. 

Ordinarily the ground on which action for the re- 
moval of children can be taken is the evidence of neigh- 
bors or the statements of police officers. Neighbors are 
exceedingly unwilling to go into court in such cases. 
They may assure the visitor of the existence of immoral 
conditions and urge the removal of the children, but 



206 HOW TO HELP 

they will not carry their interest to the point of incur- 
ring a neighbor's hostility by appearing openly against 
him. In some cases the evidence of the police will be 
found most helpful; in others, the police themselves are 
not above suspicion, and may have personal reasons for 
not seeing anything wrong in the conduct of a given 
household. Consequently, the visitor may find that legal 
steps cannot be taken, although there may be no doubt 
that the children are suffering. 

In such a case, besides exerting such indirect influ- 
ence as may be possible to improve home conditions, the 
best thing the visitor can do is to undertake the role of 
truant officer, and see that those particular children are 
kept steadily at school. This will often be a task of 
considerable difficulty, as parents of such a kind are 
almost certain to interpose every obstacle they can 
devise. As they are not hampered by any regard for 
truth, their excuses will be many and varied, and it will 
tax the visitor's patience and resolution to see that the 
children really attend with a fair degree of regularity. 
The best plan is to see the teacher, explain the situation 
and enlist her cooperation. Usually this will be given 
cordially, and through it the task may be successfully 
accomplished. 

This may seem an entirely inadequate remedy. In 
point of fact, it is not a remedy ; it is merely a palliative, 
to be adopted when a remedy is impracticable. Still, it 
has several good points. In the first place it gives the 
children the best chance they are likely to have of com- 
ing into contact with respectable people and learning 
something of their standards of life. It obliges the 
parents to give the children decent clothing and a cer- 
tain amount of care. Further, since the children are 



CONCERNING CHILDREN 207 

likely to talk of what goes on at home and since this 
may lead to fuller investigations than the parents desire, 
it exercises a restraining influence on them. Finally, it 
not only gives the children the educational training and 
the drill in regularity and responsibility which they so 
entirely lack at home, but by interesting in them their 
teachers and others gives them just so many more 
opportunities of obtaining helpful, friendly influences, 
of which they are likely to need all they can get. 

In cases of physical neglect or cruelty, there is likely 
to be less difficulty in securing the evidence necessary 
to justify legal interference. There is a pretty gener- 
ally diffused sentiment against the abuse of childhood 
in these more definite and perceptible forms which 
will prompt the neighbors to testify, and the child's 
condition itself will bear witness. It is usually best to 
undertake any legal action through the Society for the 
Prevention of Cruelty to Children, or some similar asso- 
ciation. 

There are some differences from state to state in the 
legal definition of what constitutes punishable abuse of 
a child, and the worker will do well to secure informa- 
tion as to local legislation. Ordinarily, cruelty, failure 
to provide food or shelter, taking or sending a child out 
to beg, and subjecting it to immoral influences or asso- 
ciations, are grounds for action. A knowledge of when 
and how the law may be invoked and what will be the 
consequences of calling upon it will often enable a visi- 
tor to restrain a parent from injurious treatment of a 
child, especially in cases where the parent is using the 
child for purposes of beggary. 

When both parents are intemperate or immoral, the 
problem of what should be done is a simple one, but 



208 HOW TO HELP 

when one is vicious and the other excellent, situations 
sometimes arise in which it is hard to decide on any 
satisfactory course of action. In such a case the parent 
of good character not only has the right to make the 
decision, but by far the best results are likely to be 
reached by consultation with him or her. The visitor 
should have the more accurate knowledge of what the 
law is in the matter, and what arrangements may be 
made afterward if the law is invoked; the parent has 
the keener interest in the child's welfare, the closer 
knowledge of its disposition, and the ability to judge 
better how it would adapt itself to these possible ar- 
rangements. Both sides should be represented. 

Sometimes on account of poverty or home condi- 
tions, it may become advisable to remove one child, 
leaving the others under the mother's care. Quite fre- 
quently, long before a boy or girl reaches an age per- 
mitting it to leave school and go to work, it is possible 
to find some family who will take it, giving it a home, 
clothing it and sending it to school, in return for what 
help it can give in the way of chores and housework. 
Such an arrangement may be of great advantage to the 
child, if proper care is exercised in placing it. The dif- 
ficulty is that unscrupulous persons are likely to make 
an offer of this kind, and then, having secured the child, 
proceed to make a drudge of it, cutting short its school 
time and seriously overworking it. In any case in 
which a child is removed from its own family and 
placed with strangers a heavy responsibility is incurred, 
and the visitor should not only be very sure beforehand 
of the character of the family with which it is placed, 
but should make a point of keeping in touch with it. 



CONCERNING CHILDREN 



209 



seeing it frequently and making sure that the change 
is really for its advantage. 

In cases of this kind, in which a child is removed from 
its parents on account of their poverty, it may be well 
that the whole arrangement should be entirely informal. 
When, however, a child is taken on account of the 
parents' objectionable moral character, or because 
through intemperance or shiftlessness they are unable 
to care for it, the matter should go through the courts, 
and its legal guardianship should be definitely assigned. 
If this is not done, as soon as the child reaches a wage- 
earning age the parents are likely to assert their claims, 
and will often remove it from entirely satisfactory sur- 
roundings, forcing it to live with them at the sacrifice 
of its future welfare, merely for the sake of securing its 
earnings. 

In the cases referred to above, in which the child is 
removed at the request of one parent in order to protect 
it from the influence of the other, whether or not it is 
necessary to take the matter into the courts will depend 
somewhat upon which parent is blamable. If the mother 
is at fault, the father's legal control of the child in most 
places is sufficient to make unnecessary any assignment 
of its guardianship ; it must be remembered, though, 
even in this case, that in the event of the father's death 
the mother may make trouble if the guardianship has 
not been assigned to some other person. When, how- 
ever, the father is at fault, the fact that in most states 
the mother has no inherent legal right to the custody of 
the child renders it important to take the matter into 
court and have the guardianship definitely assigned to 
some one other than the father. It goes without saying 
that legal advice should be taken in all such cases. 
14 



210 HOW TO HELP 

Another matter in which a visitor may be of much 
use arises as soon as the question comes up of putting 
the children of the family to work. In the present state 
of our child labor legislation this question is sure to 
arise very promptly when a family finds itself in want. 
It hardly seems necessary to reiterate that a visitor 
should never permit any evasion of the child labor laws, 
no matter what the circumstances of a given family. If 
the small sum a child under school age can earn is really 
badly needed, and if it is impossible for the need to be 
met through the efforts of the older members of the 
family or from any of the natural sources of relief, then 
charity should be called upon to make up the deficiency. 
For the sake of the future welfare of the child and of 
the community alike the years of childhood should be 
protected. Yet workers among the poor often show a 
curious obtuseness on this point. 

"It wasn't long after I came to this place," said one 
professional worker, "that a gentleman called at the 
office one day and asked me to visit the Richsons and 
give him some advice about them. He had been help- 
ing until he had grown discouraged, and wanted to 
know whether anything effective could be done. I 
found that the family had quite a record. Mr. Richson 
wasn't very strong, and at first had really lost one posi- 
tion after another through attacks of illness. Help had 
been given freely and both he and his wife had come to 
feel that it was easier to ask for food and clothes than 
to work for them. The man was in fairly good health 
at that time, quite able to do ordinary work, and the 
woman was robust and vigorous. There were three 
children, the oldest a boy, who was busy with paper and 
pencil at the time of my first call. I stopped to admire 



CONCERNING CHILDREN 21 1 

his work, which was a picture of a locomotive, remark- 
ably well done. 

;< 'Oh, Herbert's awful good at drawing/ said his 
mother, 'and he's awful fond of machinery. There ain't 
anything about an engine or a steamboat he can't draw, 
and if I'd let him he'd always be around the machine 
shops.' 

"I came to the conclusion that there was no earthly 
reason for giving help to that family. Work ought to 
be provided, and aid withheld, under which conditions 
they would undoubtedly prove abundantly able to sup- 
port themselves. I reported this to the gentleman who 
referred them. 

" That's just what I thought/ he exclaimed, wrath- 
fully ; 'they've been working me and I'm tired of it. 
Well, I've got a place for that boy, and if they don't 
send him to work I'll not do a thing for them. They've 
got to brace up and help themselves a bit.' 

; ' 'Do you mean you want Herbert to go to work ?' I 
exclaimed. 'Why, the boy isn't twelve yet. He ought 
to be in school for two years to come.' 

" 'I've got a permit for him/ answered the benevolent 
individual, 'and I've found a place in the messenger 
service. It's better for him to work than for his father 
and mother to be begging the way they're doing now. 
I'm disgusted with them.' 

"And my representations were useless. The state 
was one of those benighted ones where a child could be 
excused from school attendance on the representation by 
reliable people that his parents were unable to support 
their family without his earnings, and my benevolent 
visitor, who was one of the leading lights of the com- 
munity, had unhesitatingly declared that this was the 



212 HOW TO HELP 

situation with the Richsons. So Herbert was taken 
from school and put to work on the night shift at the 
age of eleven years and eight months, in order to train 
his parents in self-reliance." 

"What became of the boy?" asked a listener. 

"I don't like to think about that," said the worker, 
"though it's a common story enough. You know what 
the irregular life of the messenger boys is, and how 
often it leads to moral injury. It did with Herbert. He 
was exposed to all sorts of temptations and was too 
young to withstand them. One thing followed another, 
and at last he was brought into court for stealing money 
from a package entrusted to him. It wasn't the first 
time he had appropriated parcels or parts of their con- 
tents, and the judge felt it necessary to make an example 
of him. He was sent out to the reformatory for 
minority. As I listened to the judge, I couldn't quite 
make up my mind which most deserved that sentence, 
the parents, or the charitable man who had driven the 
boy into temptation because he believed the father and 
mother were lazy and worthless. I should have taken 
most satisfaction myself in seeing it executed against the 
man." 

Prcbably there are very few dispensers of relief who 
would so recklessly ignore the rights of the child, but 
there are many good and kind people who in a less 
degree fail to realize the importance of throwing the 
burden of a family's support on the elder members, 
rather than on the children. Sometimes these are people 
who began to work very early in their own childhood, 
and who honestly believe that this is the best possible 
training for any child. They forget the great change 
which has come over the conditions of industry within 



CONCERNING CHILDREN 



213 



the last forty or fifty years. Work is far more sub- 
divided, and hence is of much less educational value; it 
is carried on under a far greater nervous strain, often 
under less healthful conditions, gives little chance for 
advancement, and tends far more to become a deaden- 
ing routine. Lucy Larcom might enter the mills at 
eleven years old without injury, but were she a girl of 
the same age today it would be as impossible for her 
to repeat that experience as to bring back the stage 
coach to take the place of the railroad, or to substitute 
sailing vessels for steamships. 

But the visitor should not only see that children are 
not put to work too early; the choice of the work to 
which they shall be put is a hardly less important mat- 
ter. There is a tendency to put them into the first thing 
at which they can earn a few cents, regardless of 
whether this offers opportunities for training, or whether 
it is healthful work, or' what will be its influence on the 
child's character and habits, or whether there is any- 
thing else for which the child has a special aptitude. It 
has been estimated that half the genius of the world is 
lost to the world because those on whom it is bestowed 
are forced through poverty to take up work for which 
they are unfitted, at which they can never be anything 
but inferior workers, but which will bring them imme- 
diate returns. Naturally, one will encounter few chil- 
dren who have a genius for anything, but when one is 
found with a marked aptitude in any direction, it may- 
be well worth while to see that opportunity is given for 
cultivating it. 

Before a child leaves school the visitor should be on 
the watch to keep it, if possible, from any of the so- 
called street trades, such as selling papers, peddling 



2i 4 H0W TO HELP 

matches, blacking shoes, and so on. There seems no 
room for doubt that the influence of these trades is bad 
for the child, physically and morally. The hours are 
irregular and frequently extend far into the night; the 
associations are of the worst; the uncertainty of the 
returns helps to develop the gambler's spirit; the ex- 
posure is often cruel in its severity; and the earnings 
are pitifully disproportioned to the cost at which they 
are gained. Wherever the subject has been investi- 
gated, it has been found that a very large proportion of 
the children sentenced to reformatory and correctional 
institutions come from the street trades. 

The messenger service, even when the boys entering 
it have reached the legal age for going to work, is 
equally objectionable, with some added disadvantages of 
its own. Prominent among these is the constant temp- 
tation to dishonesty, not only in the form of direct 
theft, but in overcharging for the delivery of the mes- 
sage or parcel, a bit of sharp practice rendered easy by 
the ignorance of many people as to the proper charge. 
"A judge told the writer that one-third of all the delin- 
quent boys brought before him had, at one time or 
another, served the public as messenger boys. He re- 
garded this as the most injurious, from the point of view 
of morals, of all the occupations open to children." 

Another serious danger involved in the messenger 
and telegraph delivery service, lies in the character of 
the places to which the boys are often sent. One 
worker tells of her experience in trying to locate a run- 
away girl. She had some reason to think the girl 
might be in a certain disreputable house in a neighbor- 
ing city. She went to the city and wishing to get a 
message to the girl, sent for a messenger, asking that 



CONCERNING CHILDREN 



215 



she should have as old a boy as they could send her. A 
boy of fourteen was supplied. Reluctantly, she sent 
him to the place described to her. The girl was not 
there, and not wishing to give up the search the worker 
took counsel with the boy. He entered most cordially 
into the effort, and spent the day trying one place after 
another. He was acquainted with all the houses of bad 
reputation in the city, knew the distinguishing charac- 
teristics of the patrons of each, and was acquainted with 
many of the inmates. His help was of the greatest 
value in the search, which was finally successful, but it 
opened one worker's eyes as to what kind of training 
the messenger service gives adolescent boys. 

Apart from these objections, both the street trades 
and the messenger service have the great disadvantage 
of giving no preparation for the future. Mrs. Florence 
Kelley, whose long experience among working children 
gives peculiar force to her words, puts the matter con- 
cisely : 

"Let us assume that in spite of all its disadvantages, 
some rare boy survived a long term of employment in 
the telegraph and messenger service and emerged with 
digestion unhurt by irregular meals and coffee drink- 
ing; nerves sound in spite of lost sleep and cigarette 
smoking; character untained by evil companionship and 
the overwhelming temptation to dishonesty. What has 
such a boy to show for the years he has spent in deliv- 
ering messages? He has no trade, no craft, no skill of 
any kind, no discipline of mind or body to fit him for 
rising in any direction. The irregularity of his work 
has unfitted him for any sustained effort when he has 
passed the age for accepting children's wages. One of 
the problems of the settlement is to find work for boys 
who have outgrown the messenger's uniform. The lads 
have learned nothing which is of any value to them. 



2i6 HOW TO HELP 

There is no versatility in them which might make them 
desirable employees in the hobble-de-hoy age. Their 
eagerness to make a record of speed and promptness has 
all oozed away. They are no longer dazzled at the 
prospect of earning $4.00 a week. They know most 
exactly the purchasing power of the wages they are 
likely to receive, and balancing the fatigue and exertion 
against the pay, they simply sit still and wait for some- 
thing to turn up, rather better pleased if nothing can be 
found for them to do. Not every boy is morally ruined 
by this work; but the earlier he enters upon it, and the 
longer he remains in it, the greater the probability of his 
ruin." 1 

It may seem that it is a rather serious problem to 
help a child to employment, when there are such dangers 
in the common forms of industry, but so indeed it is, and 
the sooner this is recognized, the better the chance for 
the children. In the individual case, the matter will be 
much simplified if the child has a strong inclination for 
any particular line. If it has not, then every effort 
should be made to place it where the conditions of work 
are not unhealthful nor morally dangerous, and where 
it will have a chance to rise, receiving in each place 
training which will help it on to the next grade. To 
find such an opening is not always easy. All the 
methods mentioned in the discussion of finding work 
for men may be brought into play, and in addition it 
will often be found that some boys' club or other similar 
organization can give valuable aid. 

One objection is sometimes made when such careful 
effort is urged for securing a good opportunity for the 
child. "That's all very well for the individual case," 
some will say, "but it can't be applied at all generally. 

1 Some Ethical Gains through Legislation, p. 22. 



CONCERNING CHILDREN 217 

Not everybody can be successful. There must always 
be those to do the rough and poorly paid work of the 
world, and you only make them dissatisfied with the 
inevitable by all this talk of raising them above that 
station.'' 

There is a modicum of truth in this. Undoubtedly 
there will always be a residuum who are unfitted for the 
more intelligent and interesting work of the world; but 
there is no reason why that residuum should not be 
reduced to its lowest terms. Moreover, as philanthropic 
workers we deal with individuals, not with classes, and 
there is every reason why we should strive to give the 
individual child in whom we are interested the best pos- 
sible opportunity. The nature of the opportunity will 
vary with the character and intelligence of the child. 
Not every one can be prepared for the higher work; 
there will always be hewers of wood and drawers of 
water. But if any given child has the ability which 
would fit him for higher work it is well for him and 
well for the community that that ability should be 
developed; and if he has not, if he must be one of the 
lower ranks of workers, it is at least well that he should 
be a healthful, well developed and morally sound wood 
hewer or water drawer. 

As has been said before, when a family is broken 
up the authorities usually take the responsibility of 
deciding the children's destiny. When, however, per- 
sons in whom a visitor has been interested die, leav- 
ing children, interest in the family naturally does not 
stop with the parent's death, and the visitor may 
thus be confronted with the problem of disposing of 
a group of dependent children. If relatives are willing 
and able to take them, the matter settles itself, always 



2l8 HOW TO HELP 

supposing the relatives are suitable people to have 
charge of them. If no such disposition is possible, the 
choice usually lies between putting the children into 
some institution and finding places for them in private 
families. 

It is a pretty generally accepted principle that insti- 
tutions are, while sometimes necessary, always an evil. 
Institution children lack initiative and self-reliance; 
they are accustomed to act by invariable rules, usually 
at the word of command. They get none of the give 
and take of daily life, none of the hourly unconscious 
training in adaptability and self-dependence which the 
normal environment of a child supplies. They are at 
a loss when they are passed out from the institution and 
find themselves no longer under guidance, subjected to 
the fierce competition of which they have had no ink- 
ling. For these reasons in many places the institution is 
being used only as a receiving station, from which the 
children are placed in private families, under public 
supervision, as rapidly as places can be found for them. 
In other communities, in which this placing-out system 
is deemed impracticable, the huge institution building is 
being replaced by numerous small buildings or cottages 
in which little groups of boys or girls live as nearly as 
possible a family life. 

On the other hand, unless there is some state placing- 
out system, or unless some large private society under- 
takes this form of work, it is difficult to secure proper 
supervision for the child placed in a private family. 
Ordinarily the visitor will not have either time or oppor- 
tunity to select a suitable home and afterward to keep 
the close watch required over the child's surroundings 
and treatment. Generally it is the best plan to let the 



CONCERNING CHILDREN 



219 



child be taken in charge by the authorities and placed 
by them, after which the visitor may well follow it up 
with a friendly interest which may grow into a lifelong 
friendship on both sides. 



CHAPTER XVII 



CARE OF THE AGED 



There is a general and entirely justifiable feeling on 
the part of most relief societies and private givers that 
children are the all-important consideration. It is 
among them that constructive work can be done most 
hopefully. Work among adults is apt to be at best 
alleviative; they have had their chance or they have 
been deprived of it; in either case their characters are 
relatively fixed, and efforts to change them are slow and 
uncertain in their results. But the children are plastic, 
and work done among them today is preventive of a 
hundred ills tomorrow. It is natural and right that 
emphasis should be placed on helping them and the 
families in which they are found ; but this discrimination 
frequently leaves the aged in a pitiable situation. 

There are few more pathetic figures than that of the 
elderly woman who for one reason or another has not 
been able to make sufficient provision against old age, 
who finds her earning ability constantly decreasing or 
entirely gone, whose savings are diminishing and who 
sees the dreaded shadow of the almshouse drawing 
nearer and nearer. The case of elderly married people 
is perhaps even harder, for they must face not only the 
going to the poorhouse, a fate from which the respect- 
able poor shrink with a horror scarcely to be realized 
by the well-to-do, but frequently the added pang of 
separation, since in most institutions the sexes are kept 
apart, with the exception of an hour or two once a 
week when husband and wife are permitted to see each 
other. 

220 



CARE OF THE AGED 221 

Ordinarily the charitable worker will find it difficult 
to secure sufficient help for the aged outside of institu- 
tions. Apart from the feeling that their funds should 
be used where children will be benefited, relief societies 
do not like to assume a responsibility from which it is 
painful and embarrassing to withdraw, and which may 
continue for years. As a consequence it will usually be 
found necessary to get help for such cases either from 
public funds, which generally involves the applicant's 
entering an institution, from relatives and former 
employers and friends, or from benevolent individuals. 
The course of action required will differ both in accord- 
ance with the partial or complete inability of the appli- 
cant to care for himself, and with his previous character 
and record. 

Elderly single persons may often have to apply for 
help before their earning capacity is exhausted. They 
may be no longer able to maintain themselves under the 
stress of competitive conditions, but nevertheless be 
capable of rendering good service for years longer, if 
these conditions are somewhat modified for their benefit. 
A woman who could not take an ordinary place at 
service may be welcomed in some household where the 
mother is obliged to go out to work, in which she can 
look after the children, help along with all but the 
heaviest tasks, prepare the lunches to be sent to the mill 
or factory and have the cup of hot tea ready for the 
workers' return. Often some unattached elderly woman 
entering a family in this capacity makes herself really 
one of it, and secures not only a shelter but a home until 
her death. Occasionally some elderly woman who does 
not wish to enter a family will vary this method by 
going out for the day to take care of children while 



222 HOW TO HELP 

their mother is at work, or by coming in for a few hours 
to help in the house work. Her remuneration will be 
very small, but elderly women learn to diminish their 
expenses almost incredibly. 

Such an arrangement as either of these is better made 
by the persons immediately concerned than through a 
charitable worker. The latter can occasionally fit a 
woman into a household to the advantage of both sides, 
but there is a strong tendency, when this is done, for 
both parties to view the arrangement with suspicion, and 
to be ready for a disagreement on very slight occasion. 
If, on the other hand, the applicant can remember any 
acquaintance or friend with whom she might thus find a 
home, it is well to leave the planning entirely to her, 
standing ready, if necessary, to make any small addi- 
tion needed to her future income. Sometimes, when the 
applicant is hardly capable of sufficient work to enter 
into such an arrangement on a business footing, she can 
find some family who for the sake of old acquaintance- 
ship will take her in if she can provide her own clothes, 
or pay some very small sum into the family treasury. 
When this can be done, it is well to make up the amount 
needed from whatever source is possible, as it is not 
only the cheapest way of securing continuous care for 
the woman, but is likely to result in far more satisfac- 
tion to her than would much more elaborate and scien- 
tifically commendable care bestowed upon her in an 
institution. 

Here, as in all other cases, such an arrangement 
should be undertaken only after careful investigation. 
Sometimes an elderly person is an invaluable adjunct to 
a family which wishes to live by fraud or beggary, and 
the worker must be sure that an apparent offer of a 



CARE OF THE AGED 



223 



home does not cover a real purpose to use the applicant 
in some unjustifiable capacity. 

"When I first became interested in philanthropic 
work," said one visitor, "I had a call from an old woman 
who wanted a little help. She was too old to work, but 
she had been living for years with a family who had 
given her a home without question of charge. They 
had had hard luck and were scarcely able to keep her, 
but didn't want to turn her out. Someone had promised 
to give her a quarter each week; if I would only do the 
same, this half dollar would make all the difference to 
her friends, who thought her food wouldn't cost much 
more than that. She came to me because she had once 
worked for a friend of mine in another city, and had 
heard me spoken of there. 

"Well, I investigated. I wrote to the friend, who 
remembered that a woman of that name had worked for 
them twenty years before; she didn't recollect her very 
well, but thought she was all right. I also called on the 
family with whom old Margaret was staying. It wasn't 
till long afterward that I remembered I had told Mar- 
garet when I would come. I was immensely pleased 
with the cleanliness of the bare room in which I was 
received. I didn't altogether like the looks of the 
friends, but they talked so reasonably that I overlooked 
that. Yes, they thought the world of Margaret; they 
wouldn't turn her out, whatever happened, but I could 
see for myself they weren't in a position to give her food 
and clothes. Whatever I gave her would be hers, to be 
spent by her as she thought best. Of course, if I chose 
to give Margaret food sometimes, it would help out the 
scanty supply they could furnish. So I gave her a little 
sum regularly, and as she usually brought a basket with 



224 H0W T0 HEL P 

her, it was natural to put in some food and to hand her 
any clothes I was done with and thought she could turn 
to account. 

"It was quite by accident that I happened more than 
a year later to be passing the tenement where she lived 
rather late one Saturday evening, and heard sounds of 
a drunken quarrel within. An officer was near by and 
I walked over to him. 'I wonder,' I said, 'if you 
wouldn't go in there with me? I know an old woman 
who lives there, and I'm afraid she'll be frightened, if 
not hurt.' 

"The officer looked at me doubtfully. 'Do you mean 
old Margaret,' he asked, 'the old woman with white 
hair, who goes around with a basket?' 

" 'Yes,' I answered. 

" 'Well, now lady,' he said, T wouldn't go in there if 
I was you. Margaret always gets full Saturday night, 
and I guess she's making most of that row herself. You 
needn't worry about her getting hurt. There ain't many 
can scrap better than she can.' 

"My first impulse was to deny it indignantly, but the 
officer didn't look like a sympathetic man, and I con- 
cluded to leave. The next day, though, I made a few 
calls, and found that he was right. Margaret was the 
main support of that family — a family containing two 
able-bodied men. 'She brings in a basket full of stuff 
every day,' said my informants, 'and nobody knows how 
much money. They sell what they don't eat, or trade it 
off for liquor. They're all a drunken set, and grandma 
— that's what everybody calls her around here — can do 
her part with any of them when it comes to drinking.' 

"Naturally, I stopped my contributions, but I hadn't 
the moral courage to appear against Margaret in court, 



CARE OF THE AGED 



225 



and I imagine none of her other dupes had, either, for 
I haven't heard of her coming to grief yet." 

For elderly men there is a wider range of possible 
usefulness than for elderly women, varying consider- 
ably with local conditions. Odd jobbing of various 
sorts, tending fruit or paper stands, all forms of work 
not demanding full physical vigor and quickness of 
thought, besides many special kinds of occupations, may 
be found by searching. Sometimes it may be well to 
transfer such a man from one locality to another, where 
the labor market is less crowded, or where less stren- 
uous competition prevails. In this case, of course, due 
care should be exercised to make sure that he will be 
really and permanently benefited by the change. 

If the applicant, whether married, single or widowed, 
is obviously incapable of self-support, a careful estimate 
should be made of what is required to supplement his 
earnings, or to meet his needs, if he can do nothing, 
and relatives should then be sought with a view to secur- 
ing from them what is lacking. If the applicant is a 
single person, it may be entirely possible for some rela- 
tive to give a home. In the case of an elderly couple 
this is less often possible. Too frequently the relatives 
will disclaim all responsibility. In New York children 
capable of contributing to their parents' support are 
required to do so, but in most places they have no legal 
liability of this kind. Moral suasion is then the only 
means which can be used to induce them to undertake 
the responsibility. Sometimes, when no relative is able 
to do much, it may yet be possible to secure the amount 
needed by inducing each to give some small sum regu- 
larly. In these cases, the question of collecting these 
various contributions, which will usually be paid weekly 
or monthly, becomes important. Unless the visitor can 
15 



226 HOW TO HELP 

do it in person, or provide some collector, the plan is 
apt to fall to pieces within a very short time. 

If sufficient help to keep them in comfort cannot be 
secured from relatives, further action should be deter- 
mined by the character and antecedents of the old per- 
sons concerned. If they have been intemperate, lazy 
and thriftless all their lives, it is hardly worth while to 
make a further effort to provide for them outside of the 
almshouse. They will receive there what is needed to 
keep them in reasonable physical comfort; ordinarily 
they will be kindly treated, and the associations will not 
be unaccustomed or distressing to them. If, on the 
other hand, they are respectable, hard-working people 
who have been reduced to want through ill health, mis- 
fortune or the fault of others, every means should be 
used to care for them adequately outside of the public 
institutions. 

In most places there are homes both for elderly men 
and elderly women, in which single or widowed people 
may be received. Sometimes an admission fee is 
charged. Sometimes they are free to all possessing cer- 
tain qualifications in the way of settlement or church 
membership or affiliations of some other kind. Usually 
a person admitted to one of these homes is provided for 
until death, so that it is well worth while to make an 
effort to raise the necessary fees. In doing this all 
natural sources of aid, such as relatives, friends, former 
employers, church connections, etc., should be applied 
to before strangers are approached. If the applicant 
has ever belonged to a benevolent or fraternal order, 
even though his membership has lapsed, it is worth 
while to make an application there; for the sake of old 
times something may be done. 



CARE OF THE AGED 



227 



When all these natural agencies have been canvassed 
without securing the amount needed, recourse should be 
had to various outside sources. Occasionally some 
church circle or group of King's Daughters may be in- 
terested in the effort to raise the necessary sum, and 
valuable aid secured through them. Sometimes appli- 
cation may be made with good effect to some wealthy 
person, ignorant of this particular case, but interested 
in charitable work in general. In some cities it is not 
unusual to advertise such cases in the public papers, 
stating the amount required and acknowledging with 
equal publicity all contributions received. The difficulty 
with this method is that if successful it is likely to be 
widely followed. An advertisement inserted by some 
careful worker who has full knowledge of the case 
under consideration, and who has prepared the notice 
with due care to preserve the applicant's privacy and to 
avoid injury to his self-respect, may give the idea to a 
host of careless and superficial workers who will dis- 
regard these proper precautions altogether. The harm 
done by injudicious newspaper appeals is so great that 
unless the custom has been established under suitable 
safeguards in any given place, it is of doubtful wisdom 
to introduce it. 

The worker will almost certainly encounter, sooner 
or later, occasional elderly men or women who, while 
honest and self-respecting, and in want through no fault 
of their own, are too quarrelsome, too "cranky," or per- 
haps too mischief-making, to get on with any one. 
Relatives might be willing to give a home, but have 
found by experience that the results are unfortunate for 
all concerned. In such cases there is seldom any 
resource but the almshouse. The same qualities which 



228 HOW TO HELP 

make them unwelcome in a private home are likely to 
make so much trouble in a Home for the Aged that 
their stay is usually short, even if admission can be 
gained for them. Sometimes private givers can be 
found who will bear with all their unreason, and con- 
tinue to care for them in spite of it, but such givers are 
rare. Ordinarily, effort spent in trying to arrange for 
their care outside of a public institution is futile. 

In the case of an elderly couple it is not usually pos- 
sible to gain for them admission to any Home where 
they may remain together. There are a few such places, 
but ordinarily entrance into a Home or an institution 
means a practical divorce for people who have perhaps 
lived together for more than half a century and against 
whom no fault can be urged but poverty. This is such 
a hardship that every effort should be put forth to secure 
for them a pension which will sustain them comfortably 
in their own home, together. This will often be a diffi- 
cult matter, but it is a kind of work which, if successful, 
brings large returns in the way of satisfaction. Its 
benefits are obvious, and, since the character of the old 
people is already definitely fixed, there is no disturbing 
doubt as to the wisdom of giving help as freely as it 
can be obtained, no fear of sapping independence, no 
danger that while relieving physical hardships one is 
creating moral ills. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

SPECIAL CASES : FEEBLE-MINDEDNESS, ETC. 

While dealing with normal families, the worker is 
sure to come across a number of abnormal individuals, 
for whom special treatment is necessary. The feeble- 
minded, the epileptic, the insane, sufferers from tuber- 
culosis in various forms, the maimed, the halt and the 
blind — all or any of these may be found, and for all the 
visitor must seek some method of cure or alleviation. 

What can be done in any given case depends largely 
upon the community. In some states the care of the 
poor has been specialized, and for each class of unfor- 
tunates, institutions are provided in which they may 
receive the particular kind of care and training needed 
to fit them for normal life, or, if that is impossible, to 
render them as happy and as useful as their infirmity 
permits. In other places the almshouse is still the 
catch-all, to which every dependent is sent regardless of 
the causes of his dependency, of the possibility of its 
removal, or of the effect either upon him or his com- 
panions of placing him under institutional conditions 
determined without reference to his needs. 

In some states in which this haphazard method pre- 
vails, the authorities recognize its inadequacy to the 
extent of trying to secure better conditions at least for 
children of school age, whom they will send to institu- 
tions adapted to their needs in other more advanced 
states. In such cases the home state usually pays the 
child's board at the institution in question, but fre- 

229 



230 HOW TO HELP 

quently will not take any further responsibility, leaving 
the cost of clothing and transportation to be met by the 
parents or by private charity. 

What care the state provides for unfortunates of any 
particular class may usually be learned by enquiry at 
any charity organization society, if one exists. Where 
there is none, the city directory may prove useful. 
Twenty-eight states have centralized the direction of 
their charities. In these, any city directory is apt to 
give, under some such heading as "State Government," 
the names and addresses of those composing the central 
body, known variously as "State Board of Charities," 
"Board of Control," "State Board of Supervisors," etc. 
An application to any member of these boards will 
usually bring either full information, or a statement as 
to where and how it may be obtained. The overseer of 
the poor in any given locality should also be able to give 
this information. His interests, however, are some- 
times limited to his local work, and it is safer to apply 
to the higher authorities for the more general informa- 
tion needed. 

Of the various forms of affliction the visitor will 
encounter, feeble-mindedness and tuberculosis are the 
most general and the most disastrous socially. Statis- 
tics are not available to show for how much of our 
poverty they are responsible, but every charity worker 
feels that if they could be checked we should have 
taken a long step toward drying up the sources of want. 
Feeble-minded men and women marry and burden the 
community with children apt to be degenerate mentally 
or physically, or both; or they remain unmarried and 
add to the population a similar number of descendants 
handicapped by the added disadvantage of illegitimacy. 



SPECIAL CASES 231 

Tuberculosis is snatching away men and women in the 
prime of life, capable of supporting themselves and their 
dependents in comfort — fathers and mothers whose death 
leaves their families to sink into poverty, and whose ill- 
ness too often involves the transmission of the disease 
to others. And in both cases the evil might be reduced 
to an as yet uncalculated minimum by the application to 
the problem of common sense and ordinary business 
sagacity on the part of the community. 

Feeble-mindedness presents a troublesome problem to 
the visitor, both on account of the generally insufficient 
provision made for its care, and of the difficulty of 
persuading the ordinary family to allow the sufferer to 
receive this care, even when it can be had. It exists in 
widely differing degrees, ranging from a slight dullness 
to absolute idiocy. Those who are only a little below 
the normal standard may go through life in much the 
same fashion as their fellows, always lagging a little 
behind, always at the foot of their classes in school, 
always getting the poorly paid positions in the outside 
world, the first to be laid off and the last to be taken on 
at their respective places of employment, usually having 
a harder time than the average man or woman, fre- 
quently needing a helping hand, but still, on the whole, 
capable of making their own way under ordinary condi- 
tions. On the other hand, the low grade imbeciles and 
the absolutely idiotic generally find their way, sooner or 
later, into institutions where, even if these are only the 
county poor farms, they are cared for more or less wisely 
and tenderly, and where they are, at least, out of the 
way of receiving or inflicting serious harm. But the 
intermediate classes present a problem full of difficulty 



232 HOW TO HELP 

and bristling with dangers both for the sufferer and for 
society. 

The consensus of opinion at present is that feeble- 
minded children are best provided for by placing them 
in institutions where work and educational facilities 
adapted to their varying degrees of intelligence may be 
furnished them, where they may be more carefully classi- 
fied than is possible in ordinary schools for the back- 
ward and deficient, and where suitable care may be 
exercised over them unceasingly. Under this treatment 
the brightest may become able to go back to a normal 
life and play their parts in the world, while those who 
cannot do that may become partially self-supporting, 
and — which is of more importance — lead safe and fairly 
happy lives. Some oppose this method of treatment, 
claiming that the abnormal child stands peculiarly in 
need of the stimulus received from contact with normal 
companions, and that segregation results in increasing 
his defects. The facts, so far as they have yet been 
gathered, do not seem to sustain this view, and the most 
enlightened states are providing such schools for the 
children and colonies for similar care of the adult feeble- 
minded. 

Frequently, even when admission to such an institu- 
tion can be secured for a feeble-minded child, it will be 
found that the parents object to parting with it. This 
is especially apt to be the case if the institution is at any 
distance. There is much that is beautiful in the care and 
tenderness often manifested by a whole family toward a 
defective member, but there is danger that too great 
sacrifices may be made through the affection its help- 
lessness evokes. The degree of urgency which should 
be exercised to secure the child's removal should depend 



SPECIAL CASES 233 

not only on its own chances of improvement, but on the 
effect on the other children of its retention in the home. 

There is no question that in many instances normal 
children suffer from the presence in the family of a 
feeble-minded child. Sometimes this injury is definite 
and concrete, as when some child must be kept from 
school to look after the afflicted member. Often it is 
less immediately obvious, as when the other children are 
subjected to a severe nervous strain through the peculi- 
arities of the sufferer, or as when younger children are 
in danger of contamination through the moral irrespon- 
sibility of an older member of the family. Sometimes 
a child too defective to be held accountable manifests a 
curious tendency to pick up profanity and vulgarity, and 
to bring into the home the coarsest talk of the street cor- 
ner, or other loafing place. 

Generally speaking, in any state which provides well 
for its feeble-minded children, the visitor should use 
every means to persuade the parents to consent to place 
a defective child under proper care. When, however, 
the almshouse or poor farm is the only asylum for such 
unfortunates, nothing but the certainty of direct and 
serious harm to the other children through the presence 
in the home of the defective child should lead the visitor 
to urge sending it away. If this step becomes neces- 
sary, the visitor should make a point of seeing the child 
frequently after its commitment, and keeping well in- 
formed as to the conditions of its life. 

Whatever may be thought of the policy of segregat- 
ing feeble-minded children, charitable experts are agreed 
that it is the only wise course to take with feeble-minded 
adults. The man or woman of this class allowed to go 
at large is almost sure to become a parent, and there is 



234 H0W TO HELP 

a close connection between feeble-minded parentage and 
degenerate offspring. The records of almost any alms- 
house will show instances of feeble-minded women who 
have been sent there again and again for their confine- 
ment. No such direct evidence of the social effect of 
allowing feeble-minded men their liberty is attainable, 
but a little thought will show that they are likely to 
constitute an even more serious menace to society than 
defective women. Some medical experts feel that this 
ground alone justifies the custodial care of defective 
men, and that its seriousness is not at all recognized as 
yet. "The records of crime," says one authority on the 
subject, "show that a material percentage of the assaults 
committed upon women are done by imbeciles. " Yet in 
most cases, unless the sufferer is so defective as to be 
absolutely incapable of self-support, the authorities have 
no power to keep him under restraint. 

In the more advanced communities, colonies for the 
care of feeble-minded adults have been established, 
usually under state supervision, in which the mentally 
defective are maintained, given studies, amusements 
and other means of development adapted to their con- 
dition, employed at such work as they can do, and made 
as happy and useful as possible. They are kept here 
under permanent custodial care, so that there is no pos- 
sibility of their transmitting their infirmity, of becoming 
a source of moral danger to others, or of burdening 
society with unfortunate children for whom they are 
incapable of caring. These refuges for the feeble- 
minded have never been made self-supporting, and prob- 
ably never can be, but in their preventive work they pay 
for their maintenance ten times over. 

In states in which no such institutions have been 



SPECIAL CASES 235 

established, there is no satisfactory method of treating 
adult feeble-mindedness. If a feeble-minded but par- 
tially self-supporting woman becomes the mother of an 
illegitimate child, she is very apt to be sent to the alms- 
house for her confinement, and by dint of urgent repre- 
sentations to the proper authorities it is sometimes 
possible to secure her retention there. Naturally, before 
attempting this course the visitor needs to make sure 
that the almshouse in question is so managed that the 
woman will be safer there than outside, which is not 
always a foregone conclusion. 

Two objections are sometimes brought against this 
course: first, that it is a terrible thing to subject a young 
woman, capable of much useful service and of much 
enjoyment, to what is practically imprisonment for life; 
and secondly, that the community cannot afford to 
assume the burden of her lifelong support. In regard 
to the first objection, it must be admitted that it is ter- 
rible. The fate of the feeble-minded for whom their 
community makes no proper provision is distressing to 
contemplate under any circumstances. But it is as ex- 
pedient now as it was nineteen centuries ago that one 
man should die for the people, and it is better that one 
woman should be imprisoned for life, if no better 
arrangement can be made for her safeguarding, than 
that she should bring into the world unhappy children to 
whom she can give no adequate care, whose lives may 
easily be a burden to the community and a weariness to 
themselves. 

The second objection is usually the weightier one 
with the local authorities with whom rests the decision 
in any particular case. The life of Rosie Dexter fur- 
nishes a good instance of the comparative expense to 



236 HOW TO HELP 

the community of institutional care versus self-support 
in the case of the weak-minded. Rosie was a good- 
natured, healthy colored woman, unmistakably defective 
mentally, but making up for it by great physical strength, 
a cheerful disposition, and untiring willingness to work. 
Apparently she was a sister to Topsy, since no amount 
of search ever revealed her parentage. At the time she 
came under the notice of a visitor for a certain chari- 
table society she was twenty-five, already the mother of 
three illegitimate children, and had gone to the county 
poorhouse for her fourth confinement. 

A little investigation showed that while capable of 
self-support under guidance, she was being deliberately 
exploited by one set after another of unscrupulous 
acquaintances. When she emerged from the almshouse 
with a child she would be given shelter by some alleged 
friend, who in return would expect her to take in all the 
washings which could be procured, Rosie doing the 
work and the friend handling the returns. Rosie had no 
objection to work, and as long as she had enough to eat, 
an occasional supply of tobacco, and her evenings to 
herself, which meant spending them in very dubious 
company, it was impossible to persuade her to adopt any 
other kind of life. If illness came, if it was temporary, 
the friend would shelter her; if it was more lasting, as 
she had no legal claim on anyone, no home and no rela- 
tives, she went to the poorhouse until recovery, when 
this same friend or another would be entirely willing to 
renew the arrangement. 

After repeated attempts to improve this state of 
affairs, the visitor interested at last suggested to the 
county authorities that it might be advisable to send 
Rosie to the almshouse and keep her there permanently. 



SPECIAL CASES 237 

Great was the astonishment created by this idea. "Do 
you realize," they asked, "that that woman isn't thirty 
years old, and that she may live to be eighty? She's 
perfectly well able to support herself. We have enough 
to do taking care of those who can't help themselves. 
We can't afford to take care of able-bodied men and 
women. She'll have to look out for herself." 

That was fifteen years ago. Recently the visitor 
returned to the neighborhood after a long absence and 
looked about to see how Rosie had fared taking care of 
herself. She had been, in all, the mother of twelve chil- 
dren. Four had died at a very early age, and the public 
authorities had had to bury them. Four, all under ten 
years old, showed no signs of abnormality. Two, one a 
low grade imbecile, and the other epileptic and feeble- 
minded, were "on the town," with no prospect of ever 
becoming even partially self-supporting. One, a boy of 
fourteen, had shown marked criminal tendencies, and 
was in a reform school, committed for minority on a 
charge of incendiarism. One, a girl of eighteen, was the 
mother of an illegitimate child, born in the almshouse. 
Rosie was still looking out for herself. The visitor is 
now engaged in trying to figure out with the public 
authorities just how the profit and loss account stands, 
and what the community saved by its refusal to support 
an able-bodied woman, "perfectly well able to take care 
of herself." 

Epilepsy and insanity are sometimes classed with 
feeble-mindedness, although there is no necessary con- 
nection between them, beyond the fact that all three 
show defects or aberrations of mentality. Epilepsy is 
not infrequently an accompaniment of feeble-minded- 
ness. It is a disease which can rarely be treated success- 



238 HOW TO HELP 

fully in the home of the patient, unless among - the 
wealthier classes. Like feeble-mindedness, it has been 
found that it can be advantageously treated in colonies, 
in which appropriate work and recreation can be fur- 
nished, in which the diet can be closely regulated, in 
which the patient can be kept continuously under med- 
ical supervision, and in which, if incurable, he can at 
least be kept in safety and reasonable happiness. In 
some cases the patient is apparently cured, and goes out 
to lead a normal life. In others, while the disease is not 
entirely vanquished, it is so reduced that the patient can 
safely return to his family. A residuum remains of 
cases in which permanent custodial care is as important 
as it is for the feeble-minded. 

In states which maintain such institutions the visitor 
should lose no time in inducing parents to send children 
there. Where no such care is provided, and the alms- 
house or poor farm is the only refuge, the situation is 
far more difficult. It is impossible in the ordinary insti- 
tution of this kind to provide suitable care for epileptics, 
and they are apt to degenerate mentally and morally 
within its walls. 

Sometimes it will be found possible to raise the money 
to send an epileptic child to an institution or colony in 
another state, where it may have proper care, but inas- 
much as this means a continuous charge for years, per- 
haps for the whole life of the unfortunate, it is a difficult 
task to carry through. When there is a chance that a 
child may be completely restored, or even very materi- 
ally helped, by some years of such treatment, it is more 
than worth while to make the effort. In cases where 
there is no possibility of cure or marked improvement, 
it is a question whether the time and strength necessary 



SPECIAL CASES 



239 



to raise the money for sending the child away would not 
be better employed in helping some curable case. 

Ordinarily the visitor will not have as much to do 
with insanity as with other forms of mental disease, 
because among the poor this trouble is not usually diag- 
nosed as insanity until the patient becomes dangerous 
to the community. When he reaches this point the pub- 
lic authorities usually step in and remove him to an 
asylum, whether or not the family wish it. An observ- 
ant visitor may sometimes avert a tragedy by insisting 
upon a medical examination when a man is seen to be 
''queer," before the trouble reaches an acute stage. In 
some instances a mental breakdown may be prevented 
by provision for a rest under proper conditions, with 
abundant nourishment and freedom from care. This 
usually means sending the sufferer to some sanitarium, 
and in most communities this in turn means raising the 
necessary money by a personal appeal. Money used for 
such purposes may emphatically be called preventive aid, 
and generally its expenditure is an unmixed economy, 
even from the most material point of view. What it 
saves in the way of human suffering, dependency and 
degradation cannot be estimated. 

To summarize : In each of the trinity of afflictions, 
feeble-mindedness, epilepsy, and insanity, there will be 
found cases which respond to treatment and cases which 
are hopeless. It is doubtful whether feeble-mindedness 
can properly be termed curable. In some very rare cases 
it is due to some physical cause or defect which may be 
removed or remedied, after which the patient becomes 
normal, but ordinarily it is a permanent affliction. All 
but the absolutely imbecile, however, may be much bene- 
fited by proper training. Epilepsy is sometimes and 



240 HOW TO HELP 

insanity often curable, and both are susceptible of im- 
provement even when they cannot be completely cured. 
Every consideration of humanity and economy urges 
that no pains should be spared to place the curable cases 
under conditions which may effect the cure. The same 
considerations urge no less strongly that the incurable 
cases should be segregated, that they should be placed 
under proper care and given every alleviation of which 
their lot allows, but never permitted to mingle freely in 
the life for which their infirmity unfits them, and in 
which they are in danger themselves and a possible 
source of danger to others. Above all, the incurable 
cases should not be allowed to reproduce themselves. 
They are the visibly unfit, and the welfare of the race 
demands that they lead celibate lives. 



CHAPTER XIX 

SPECIAL CASES I CONSUMPTIVES 

In regard to tuberculosis the attitude of charitable 
workers has undergone in recent years an even more 
radical change than in regard to wife desertion. Fifteen 
years ago, although the experiments which have led to 
our present knowledge of the subject were under way, 
people in general knew nothing of them. Consumption 
was accepted, just as yellow fever had been by earlier 
generations — a scourge, to be sure, responsible for much 
individual suffering and much social loss, but as inevit- 
able as an earthquake or a tornado. How much it cost 
the community in both respects was not even faintly 
realized, and the only responsibility felt in connection 
with it was that of providing for the last days of those 
who could not take care of themselves, and of aiding the 
dependents left by the death of a tuberculous patient. 

When, however, a few years ago the medical profes- 
sion announced authoritatively that tuberculosis is a 
communicable disease, that its ravages might be greatly 
checked, and that, in its earlier stages, it might be cured, 
charitable workers all over the country woke up to the 
fact that one of the greatest causes of death, disease and 
poverty in the whole dismal category might be, if not 
eradicated, at least shorn of much of its power. Asso- 
ciations for the battle against tuberculosis were formed 
in city after city, sanitaria were opened, the comparative 
effectiveness of different climates and different methods 
was studied, and the widespread interest was promptly 
16 241 



242 HOW TO HELP 

organized into the National Association for the Study 
and Prevention of Tuberculosis, which, holding its first 
meeting in 1905, has set before itself as an ideal the 
inauguration of a systematic campaign against tubercu- 
losis throughout the Union. 

Even yet the social cost of the disease is not generally 
realized. The number of victims is appalling. It is 
estimated that one in every ten of the total population 
dies of tuberculosis. 

"Each year it kills over a hundred thousand of our 
men and women, and most of these are cut off in the 
very prime of life. To women between twenty and 
forty-five it brings one-third of all deaths ; to men 
between thirty and forty-five it brings thirty-two per 
cent. Most startling of all — to young men between 
twenty and twenty-nine it brings no less than thirty-six 
per cent, of deaths from all causes." 

What it means to the community to lose such numbers 
of producers or possible producers at the very time of 
their greatest activity can hardly be estimated. What it 
means to the individual family is forced upon the charity 
worker by case after case of suffering and dependence, 
perhaps of pauperism and degeneracy, due to this cause. 
The long illness which precedes the end, diminishing the 
income at the same time that it increases expenses, 
leaves the family ill prepared to face the crisis which may 
follow the sufferer's death. When he has been the prin- 
cipal wage-earner, his death too often means that for 
years the family will be partially dependent, will be 
under-nourished and over- worked, and subjected to the 
disheartening strain of an unequal struggle with adverse 
conditions. Because of its lingering and expensive ill- 
ness, and because the disease so often attacks the head 



SPECIAL CASES 243 

of a family, consumption is now generally recognized by 
social workers as "a cause of poverty out of all propor- 
tion to its importance as a cause of death." Some even 
look upon it as the leading cause of want. Dr. Knopf, a 
well known authority on tuberculosis, says : 

"To my mind the solution of the tuberculosis prob- 
lem means the solution of the social problem. Whatever 
prevents the development of tuberculosis will prevent 
social misery. Whatever cures it will help to cure the 
social ills. Insomuch as we diminish tuberculosis among 
the masses we shall diminish suffering, misery and social 
discontent, and when the problem of tuberculosis shall 
have been solved we shall be nearer the millennium than 
we have ever been before." 

Any effective attack upon the disease as a whole must 
come through organized effort, but so much may be done 
for the individual case by private interest and assistance 
that the visitor should take pains to become familiar with 
the latest discussions of the subject. The three points 
of greatest interest to the worker are its preventability, 
its curability and its communicability. In connection 
with each of these there is work to be done. 

In regard to prevention, measures of any far reaching 
consequence are beyond the power of the individual 
visitor, yet something may be done by preaching the 
commonplaces of ventilation, of the need of sunlight and 
of outdoor exercise or recreation. Instruction in these 
matters, as well as in certain forms of cleanliness especi- 
ally important in preventing the transmission of the dis- 
ease, is now given in many public schools, but even 
when this is the case, the visitor will find abundant need 
of reenforcing these teachings. 

The home conditions often make such teachings seem 



244 H0W T0 HEL P 

rather a mockery. When a family must live in an old 
house with a record of from two to twelve deaths from 
tuberculosis which have occurred within it; when from 
two to six persons must sleep in a small and sunless 
room; when the only way of obtaining fresh air is by 
creating a draft, and when the family supply of coal is 
so scanty that any diminution of the heat of the house 
is a serious matter ; when the air which can be admitted 
by such means is of very dubious quality ; and in a dozen 
other easily imaginable circumstances, the visitor's ex- 
hortations to maintain an abundant supply of good air, 
to sleep in well ventilated rooms and to live out of doors 
as much as possible, are apt to be accepted as interesting 
but of little practical importance. 

Still, the worse the condition, from a sanitary stand- 
point, of the home the more cause for preaching in season 
and out the need of hygienic precautions, and the more 
earnestly the visitor should strive to show how to make 
the most of any existing possibilities. Sometimes the 
only thing to be done is to urge and, if necessary, to aid 
the family to seek better quarters. The necessity for 
securing accommodations at a low rent may be one of the 
most fatal ways in which the curse of the poor is their 
poverty, and it not infrequently happens that help given 
for the purpose of installing a family in more healthful 
quarters is preventive work of the most effective 
character. 

The curability of consumption in its earlier stages is 
a point in connection with which the visitor is apt to 
find far more direct and concrete work to do. Since it 
is impossible for an untrained observer to recognize the 
disease with certainty, even when it has reached an 
advanced stage, the visitor should insist upon anyone 



SPECIAL CASES 245 

who shows any of the commoner symptoms submitting 
to a medical examination. Usually this can be secured 
without charge, either through the out-patient depart- 
ment of some hospital, through the health department, 
or through public dispensaries, according to the custom 
of each place. Where no provision for it exists, a doctor 
can usually be found who will make the examination, 
either as a matter of kindness or from interest in the 
disease. From this examination it can be learned not 
only whether the disease exists, but what progress it has 
made, what are the chances of curing it and what treat- 
ment is demanded. 

There was formerly an idea that climate is the most 
important matter in the treatment of consumption, and 
Colorado and one or two other western states were 
looked upon as peculiarly desirable localities for suf- 
ferers from the disease. In their anxiety to secure the 
benefit of these climates for their patients, charitable 
workers sometimes forgot that a consumptive cannot live 
on air, no matter how exhilarating that air may be, and 
innumerable invalids were dispatched to the West with- 
out provision of any kind having been made for their 
maintenance there. The result was that the charities of 
these localities were wholly inadequate to the burden 
thrown upon them, and that the patients often suffered 
severely, losing through the hardships and anxieties of 
their existence the benefit which the climate might have 
given them. In many cases their transfer resulted only 
in their dying, lonely and uncared for, among strangers. 

It seems almost superfluous to say that no invalid 
should be sent away from home until it has been made 
certain that he will receive proper care and maintenance 
at the place to which he is sent. The New York Com- 



246 HOW TO HELP 

mittee on the Prevention of Tuberculosis strongly ad- 
vises that no patients be sent away unless: 

"(a) They are physically able to work and have 
secured in advance a definite assurance of the oppor- 
tunity to perform work of a proper character at wages 
sufficient for their suitable support ; or, 

"(b) Unless they have at their disposal at least $250 
in addition to railroad fare." 

If a patient can be sent away under either of these 
conditions, the change may be an excellent thing, but if 
such conditions cannot be secured, it is fairer for all 
concerned that he should stay at home, no matter what 
the consequences. 

Of late years, however, experts do not lay so much 
stress on climate, placing the emphasis rather on certain 
conditions of living and nourishment, which may be 
secured in almost any locality. These can be most easily 
provided in an institution. Some states have public sani- 
tariums, to which consumptives may be admitted free of 
charge, or at a very small charge, according to their cir- 
cumstances. Where there are no such public institutions 
it will usually be found difficult to secure proper treat- 
ment. In most cases sanitariums maintained by private 
effort are not free ; the amount charged may be less than 
the full sum needed for each patient's treatment, the 
difference being made up by private contributions, but 
even this reduced rate is often far beyond the consump- 
tive's own means. Often, too, there will be no place for 
the treatment of tuberculosis, free or otherwise, near the 
sufferer's home, and if he is to be given suitable care it 
will be necessary to send him some distance away, 
thereby increasing both the expense and his own unwill- 
ingness to enter the institution. 



SPECIAL CASES 247 

Naturally, any such course involves raising a consid- 
erable sum of money, since the patient's board must be 
paid for an indefinite time, and probably help must be 
given to the family during his absence. Nevertheless, 
it is a matter of economy, as well as of humanity, to 
incur the expense. If the patient is the head of a family 
his illness means not only his own suffering and elimina- 
tion from the industrial world, but the possible de- 
pendency of his family, the overtaxing of his wife, the 
putting his children to work at the earliest possible 
moment, very likely the under-nourishment of the whole 
family for a long period, and their consequent enfeeble- 
ment physically and sometimes morally. In view of the 
long train of evils attendant on the premature death of 
the wage-earner of a family the community cannot afford 
to let him die, if treatment will save his life. 

When the disease is recognized and attacked in time 
a patient may sometimes be cured without entering an 
institution or ceasing to work. The difficulty and 
expense of securing proper treatment for a sufferer after 
the disease has reached an advanced stage make it highly 
desirable to take active measures earlier in the day, and 
the visitor should be on the alert to discover any possible 
case of incipient tuberculosis. If the patient's occupa- 
tion is of an unhealthy or confining nature it may be 
necessary for him to give it up and seek something else. 
Outdoor employment is highly desirable. In the large 
cities the transportation systems offer a number of posi- 
tions for ticket choppers, flagmen, platform attendants 
and the like, in which the work is at once light and car- 
ried on in the open air. In smaller cities these openings 
do not exist, and it is far more difficult to find anything 
suitable. Sometimes odd jobbing can be secured, or 



248 HOW TO HELP 

there may be local industries which offer suitable con- 
ditions. When the patient is willing to take work in the 
country desirable openings may sometimes be found. 
Of course, ordinary farm work is out of the question, 
but light work about a gentleman's place, or a position 
as caretaker during the months when a country place is 
unoccupied may occasionally be secured. 

In these cases it is not always easy to make sure that 
the patient shall secure the other desirable conditions of 
nourishment and regularity of life, but the constant 
dwelling in the open air does wonders by itself. In one 
community known to the writer, long before the medical 
profession announced the success of the fresh air treat- 
ment, a firm conviction had grown up that the peculiar 
odor given off by wood in the process of being con- 
verted into charcoal was a sure cure for consumption or 
any lung trouble. The charcoal burners find it necessary 
to live out of doors day and night while the burning is 
going on. Usually they erect a slight shelter near the 
burning piles, under which they sleep, but this is so 
slight that it amounts to open air sleeping. In that 
locality it was not an uncommon thing for a man who 
had developed tuberculosis to give up his work and go 
into the country "to burn charcoal," and while no 
records were ever kept, the natives declare that the plan 
rarely failed. Unwittingly they had hit upon the most 
important factor in the right treatment of tuberculosis ; 
it was only their explanation of the cures which was at 
fault. 

If it seems necessary for a patient to remain in his 
own home, his diet should be carefully supervised, and 
if the family income does not permit him to have an 
abundance of eggs, milk and similar nourishing and 



SPECIAL CASES 



249 



easily digestible articles, help sufficient to supply these 
in liberal quantities for as long as they are needed 
should be provided. The patient should also be encour- 
aged to seek the fresh air in every possible manner. If 
he only sits on his doorstep, it is better than sitting in 
the house, but he should be urged to go farther afield. 
Where there is not much in his immediate neighborhood 
to lure him out it may be well to provide tickets for all 
day excursions into the country, for street car and boat 
rides, and the like. The ordinary objection to giving 
help in a family with an able-bodied wage-earner does 
not apply here, as the very crux of the situation is that 
the wage-earner is not able-bodied, and the help is given 
expressly for the purpose of bringing him to that state. 

The most serious objection to retaining in his own 
home a patient in an advanced stage of consumption lies 
in the danger of his communicating the disease. "It is 
entirely possible," says one authority, "for a patient to 
remain in his home during the whole course of the 
disease and to die there without communicating it to 
anyone else, but under the ordinary conditions of life 
among the poor it is highly improbable that he will do 
so." For this reason, even though a patient be incur- 
able, a visitor should, if possible, secure his removal to 
an institution. Often this will be found impracticable. 
The public accommodations for tuberculosis patients are 
woefully insufficient, and when money must be raised 
to place a consumptive in a sanitarium people are often 
unwilling to give unless there is a prospect of recovery. 
The ordinary hospital will not receive incurable cases of 
tuberculosis, and too frequently there is absolutely no 
place for them. 

Under such circumstances great care should be taken 



250 



HOW TO HELP 



that their stay in their homes is rendered as little harm- 
ful as possible. From any of the numerous anti-tuber- 
culosis societies the visitor can procure small pamphlets 
setting forth simple rules for the patient and his family 
to observe, in order to prevent the spread of the disease. 
Many of the societies have these printed in different 
languages, which increases their usefulness indefinitely. 
It is not sufficient to give these to the family ; the visitor 
should see that they are read and understood, and then 
should reenforce their precepts by constant exhortation. 

In many places it is necessary to undertake a double 
duty in regard to the communicability of tuberculosis; 
the visitor should at one and the same time urge the 
observance of all reasonable precautions, and attack the 
exaggerated ideas of danger from this source, which 
often lead to positive cruelty toward a consumptive. 
Among some there prevails an idea that consumption is 
contagious as smallpox is, and that the moment a man 
is known to have the disease he should be shunned like 
the lepers of old. Indirectly this idea is responsible for 
a good deal of the difficulty in securing full information 
about the prevalence of tuberculosis, and obtaining from 
physicians such prompt and accurate returns of all cases 
as would enable a municipality to take effective steps 
against the disease. 

A family knows, for instance, that if one of its mem- 
bers is declared to have tuberculosis, friends will shun 
them, the patient may be driven from his employment 
by the refusal of his mates to work with him, he may be 
forced to leave his home through the fear of the other 
tenants, and whether he dies or recovers the fact that 
there is consumption in that family will be held up 
against it as a black record, for years to come. Under 



SPECIAL CASES 



251 



such circumstances it is small wonder that a sympathetic 
doctor hesitates to report a case, or that an unscrupulous 
one is swayed by the certainty that such a report will 
mean losing the practice not only of that particular 
family, but of any other in the neighborhood in which a 
suspected case of tuberculosis may exist. The com- 
municability of the disease should certainly be guarded 
against, but this attitude toward it is as cruel as it is 
senseless, and it is an important part of the visitor's 
duties to inculcate a reasonable mean. 

The task of properly caring for a family in which 
tuberculosis exists or develops is not, as has been seen, 
an easy one, but it has its compensations. If the case 
can be taken in time and cured, the visitor has a definite 
and concrete proof of good accomplished, no small satis- 
faction in a work in which the results are so frequently 
wholly intangible. If the patient cannot be saved, his 
death may be rendered easier, and the evil may be 
checked at that point, the other members of the family 
may be kept from developing the disease, and a long 
series of ills averted. Also, in passing with the family 
through the long and painful illness, relations are almost 
sure to be formed which put the visitor in the best pos- 
sible position for helping and advising through the dif- 
ficult times which may follow. 



PART III.— Social and Preventive Work 
CHAPTER XX 

PENNY PROVIDENT WORK 

Up to this point we have dealt mainly with individual 
cases of poverty and have striven to show how non- 
professional workers among the poor may aid the vary- 
ing forms of distress which they are likely to meet. 
Such work accepts the social system as it is, and devotes 
itself to helping the poor to make the best of their lives 
under prevailing conditions. 

There are other branches of philanthropic work com- 
ing yearly into more prominence, which deal primarily 
not with the individual, but with the causes which have 
brought him to the condition of want in which he finds 
himself. These causes may exist within his own char- 
acter, as when a man is brought to want by thriftless- 
ness or intemperance, or they may be imposed on him 
by social or industrial conditions. Sometimes, although 
the causes of want are moral defects of his own, the 
defects themselves are rather directly due to social con- 
ditions. When, for instance, a child is put into the mes- 
senger service at the earliest age allowed, when he is 
kept at work all night, sent to houses of the worst 
character, given constant opportunity for dishonesty, 
kept from acquiring any regular trade, and injured 
physically and morally by the irregularities and bad 
associations and constantly recurring temptations of his 
life, he is not wholly responsible for the fact that when 

252 



PENNY PROVIDENT WORK 253 

he outgrows the messenger service, he is so frequently 
unfitted for anything else, and that he is not seldom well 
started in a career of intemperance and dishonesty. 

In other cases the causes of want are wholly social, 
having no relation to the sufferer's moral character. 
When, for instance, a laborer finds that the only tene- 
ment within his means is in a dark and unhealthy house, 
a house in which perhaps deaths from tuberculosis have 
already occurred, and within which in the dark pas- 
sages and unsunned recesses the virulent germs may 
retain their vitality for a year or more, it is no reflection 
upon his moral worth if he develops consumption, and 
his family sinks into want through his inability to care 
for them. Nor is he responsible if his premature death 
forces his children into early and unsuitable work, and 
the whole family gravitates to a lower level. 

Improved housing legislation, regulation of the em- 
ployment of children, the passage and enforcement of 
compulsory school attendance laws, provision for safe 
and healthful conditions of work, the safeguarding of 
the public health, the development of a public conscience 
which will make impossible the over work and under pay 
of some of the sweated trades and some of the indus- 
tries carried on by the lower grades of labor — these and 
many other lines of effort furnish examples of the work 
which must be done in the community at large, the work 
which simply cannot be accomplished by relief, no mat- 
ter how effective, given to the individual case of want. 

Such work, dealing almost wholly with causes and 
seeking to remove them by improving social conditions, 
has made a marvelous growth within recent times. It 
has been a natural development from the principle of the 
new philanthropy that "Causes of want must be sought, 



254 H0W T0 HELP 

and when found, must be removed or modified." Since 
its purpose is, by altering social conditions, to prevent 
the poor in future from suffering from the causes which 
are now operating to make and keep them poor, it is 
emphatically both social and preventive work. 

Speaking generally, it might be said that there are 
two distinct lines of such work — that which seeks to 
improve external conditions, such, for instance, as the 
effort to secure legislation providing for improved hous- 
ing conditions, and that which strives to improve the 
character and intellect of the classes affected by such 
legislation, both that they may benefit by it when ob- 
tained, and that they may be able to secure it for them- 
selves. In practice, the two are apt to be closely con- 
nected. Every settlement and other centre of social 
activity undertakes them both, often so uniting them 
that it is impossible to separate them. 

In the following chapters little attention will be paid 
to the more impersonal efforts to obtain better condi- 
tions. Neither will any attempt be made to consider 
adequately the various social activities touched upon, 
either in themselves or in their bearing on society as a 
whole. It is only designed to give such information as 
will enable the philanthropically inclined individual, 
looking about for the most effective way of putting in a 
certain amount of time, to form some idea of the vary- 
ing opportunities presented. 

Most forms of preventive work require an amount of 
cooperative effort and of financial support which renders 
it impossible for them to be undertaken except through 
the medium of organized associations. Where such 
associations exist the individual may do much as a 
worker or visitor for them; where they do not, it is 



PENNY PROVIDENT WORK 



255 



occasionally possible to do good service by attempting 
their work on a very modest scale. Whether or not this 
is practicable depends upon the particular kind of work 
under consideration. The average person, for instance, 
would find it difficult to undertake, single-handed, any- 
thing in the way of providing improved housing condi- 
tions, but many of the most effective forms of club work 
have been inaugurated as private ventures. 

Of all the different forms of useful activity the 
simplest and easiest is probably furnished by the dif- 
ferent associations for encouraging thrift. These are 
variously known as Penny Provident Associations, 
Stamp Savings Societies, Provident Savings Societies, 
etc., but their purpose is the same and their methods 
similar. They are formed to overcome the difficulty the 
poor find in retaining their savings until they reach an 
amount which can be deposited in a bank. The ordi- 
nary institution for savings does not accept less than a 
dollar, and it is difficult for a woman or child to save 
a dollar in a household where the demand for pennies, 
nickels and dimes is great and constant. Even fairly 
well-to-do people find it hard to accumulate small sav- 
ings unless they have some way of putting them out of 
their own reach, and the difficulty increases a hundred 
fold among the poor. Moreover, the whole tendency of 
their way of life is to discourage thrift. The amount 
which can be laid aside is so small as to seem hardly 
worth saving; chance may render them independent of 
the trivial sums which they can save; and in a life full 
of uncertainties, they are inclined to feel that there is a 
solid gain in having had whatever they have spent 
their money for. That, at least, is secure, whatever may 
happen to them tomorrow. 



256 HOW TO HELP 

For all these reasons, there is often much extrava- 
gance among the poor, for which they are hardly blam- 
able, but which is especially injurious in its effect on the 
children during their formative years. It is a common- 
place that the children of the poor have much more 
spending money, in proportion to the family income, 
than the children of the middle class. It comes in the 
shape of a penny now and a penny then, a nickel from 
this visitor and two or three cents from that relative, and 
is spent without forethought or care. The sums are so 
small that the idea of saving them hardly enters the 
child's head, unless put there by some outside influence. 

To meet this situation, the stamp savings associations 
provide gummed stamps, usually rather larger than post- 
age stamps, of varying denominations, ranging in value 
from one cent up to a dollar. They also provide small 
blank books or folders, divided into a certain number of 
spaces, each large enough to receive one of the stamps, 
which is to be gummed in. These stamps are then 
offered for sale at regular times and places. The saver 
purchases a stamp of any denomination his means per- 
mit and fastens it to his card or folder. Here it is safe. 
No matter how tempting the display in the candy shops 
he passes on his way home, no matter what the exigency, 
he cannot trade his folder for the coveted article, and 
the savings remain saved. When the folder is full of 
stamps, or when its value has reached a certain sum, the 
holder can redeem it, receiving the amount represented 
by the different stamps it contains. 

It is obvious that in all this the association does noth- 
ing even approaching relief work. It gives the cost of 
the stamps and the folders, and also of any necessary 
clerical work, but this is given indirectly, to the work 



PENNY PROVIDENT WORK 257 

rather than to any individual. The saver receives no gift 
of which he is conscious. He gains only the oppor- 
tunity to save in an easy and regular fashion the smallest 
sums he can put aside, but this is a larger gain than 
would be suspected by anyone not familiar with the 
work. 

Very frequently these stamps are offered for sale in 
the public schools, and at various clubs and centres, and 
in addition to this the associations often try to carry on 
the work among families in their own home. It fre- 
quently happens that the house mother could and would 
save small sums, but if she has to go to some centre to 
exchange her nickel for a stamp, the transaction be- 
comes, if not impossible, at least so beset with difficulties 
that it is not even attempted. If, however, a visitor will 
come regularly to her house, week in and week out, on a 
given day, ready to furnish the stamp if she has the 
nickel, she is likely to find before long not only that she 
can spare the nickel, but that she can put by a dime. 
Other members of the family are apt to become inter- 
ested and to start books ; the desire to save will increase 
as the family begins to realize the cumulative effect of 
small deposits; and visitors and savers alike are often 
surprised at the result of the experiment. 

It is evident that this plan of carrying the stamps to 
the house provides a field of activity for the most inex- 
perienced visitor. It is the easiest form of philanthropic 
work, as it requires absolutely nothing beyond faithful- 
ness and the ability to keep straight very simple accounts. 
The stamps are furnished by the society and the visitor 
is given the address of the family. The relation with 
these savers is at its beginning a purely business one, so 
that there is no embarrassment on either side. 
i7 



258 HOW TO HELP 

Usually the society hopes and plans that the relatioa 
between visitor and visited should become a friendly 
one, and if the worker has any aptitude for getting on 
with people, and any interest in developing friendly 
terms, a very pleasant acquaintance, sometimes a gen- 
uine friendship, will spring up. This, however, is not 
a necessary result, and the worker need not feel com- 
mitted to anything more than a business-like discharge 
of a very definite and simple duty. It is an excellent 
field for beginners, who are apt to feel a natural dread 
of the responsibilities involved in what is known as 
friendly visiting, but who find in this regularly recur- 
ring business call a natural and simple method of becom- 
ing acquainted with certain poor families. If the visits 
are persevered in for any length of time, they afford an 
excellent opportunity for gaining a knowledge of the 
standards and ideas of life prevailing among different 
classes, which will be of much value if distinctly chari- 
table work is attempted later on. 

Visitors who undertake such work must bear in mind 
that from the standpoint of the saver it is purely a busi- 
ness arrangement, and that consequently he sees no 
more reason for gratitude or sense of appreciation than 
he does when paying his rent. Indeed, upon occasion 
the savers are rather apt to patronize the visitors, assum- 
ing that the latter receive some compensation based on 
their sale of stamps. 

"The insurance man was after me to take more insur- 
ance on Willie," said one good woman to the patient 
visitor who had been coming through rain and shine for 
a year past, "but I told him no, I couldn't do that with- 
out stopping off your stamps, and I wouldn't take my 



PENNY PROVIDENT WORK 259 

trade away from anybody who treated me like a lady, 
like you do.'' 

Naturally, looking upon the affair in this light, the 
saver will resent any flavor of patronage or condescen- 
sion on the part of the visitors, who must choose 
whether to meet him on a purely business footing, or on 
a basis of simple human fellowship. If they choose the 
latter, they may establish a friendship which will enable 
them to be of much indirect use. Their advice will be 
sought as to the purpose and investment of savings, and 
by degrees, as they prove themselves friendly and help- 
ful in counsel, the family perplexities will be laid before 
them, and they may find many opportunities for giving 
advice and suggestions which, coming from strangers, 
would be resented, but which are accepted willingly 
from one the family have learned to trust. 

If, moreover, a time of trouble comes to the family, 
in which their savings prove all insufficient for the need, 
and help must be sought outside, the visitor is in an ideal 
position for seeing that the crisis is passed without per- 
manent injury. Long intercourse has given the knowl- 
edge of the family which the charitable agent seeks more 
or less successfully to acquire by investigation. Know- 
ing the disposition and capacity of the members of the 
family the visitor is enabled to judge, as a stranger could 
not possibly, how much help is needed and in what form 
it can best be given, how long it should be continued, 
and how it can be rendered most effective. It is not well 
for the visitor to give aid personally, but his advice and 
cooperation can make the work of a relief agency doubly 
helpful. If no such crisis occurs, the visitor has still 
been of practical use to the family by enabling them to 
accumulate the savings which would otherwise have 



260 HOW TO HELP 

been dissipated and in helping them to build up habits 
of thrift, while the relation formed through the visits 
may be a help and a pleasure to both sides. 

In communities where none of these savings societies 
exist, it is still possible for the worker to collect savings 
without the medium of the stamps. Some family which 
is never quite able to get through the winter without help 
may be persuaded to lay by money in the summer for 
the needs certain to arise within a few months. Usually 
this persuasion must be exerted by some one whom they 
trust, Sunday or day school teacher, an employer, or an 
agent of the charitable society which has helped them in 
times past. When once the visitor has been introduced 
by means of one of these agencies, the work is exactly 
the same as when undertaken for a society, except that 
receipts instead of stamps must be given for the money 
received. If it is desired to increase the work, there is 
usually little difficulty in doing so, as one saver tells 
another, and neighbor after neighbor is anxious to 
join in. 

Sometimes where no penny provident society exists to 
furnish stamps, this work is begun for the avowed pur- 
pose of saving for some particular purpose, as for coal 
or shoes; more often its object is simply to induce put- 
ting aside whatever small sums can be spared, which 
may then be used for any purpose the saver finds desir- 
able. The latter course seems more likely to produce a 
real appreciation of the advantages of thrift and of the 
value of money. Sometimes, however, it is easier to 
start a given person to save by holding up some specific 
object to be secured, and after the habit is once estab- 
lished it is likely to be continued, even after the desired 
object has been obtained. 



PENNY PROVIDENT WORK 261 

This penny provident work presents a promising field 
for clubs and social service leagues, since every place 
affords an opening for it, while volunteers are often 
better adapted to this than to more complex forms of 
work. If no society for savings exists, one may be 
started with less expense than many other kinds of asso- 
ciations, or it may be dispensed with altogether. If 
stamps are desired, they may often be procured from the 
established societies in the larger cities, which are will- 
ing to sell their stamps in quantities to smaller societies 
or to clubs and groups, whether or not these latter hap- 
pen to be within their own city. If the workers prefer 
not to tie up money in this way, they can begin without 
stamps or material of any kind, simply collecting and 
receipting for the savings obtained. 

There are two things the collector should bear in 
mind : that the work to be effective must be done regu- 
larly, and that the visited must never be allowed to use 
it as a pretext for beggary. Regularity is essential, for 
if the visit is made not at some stated time, but whenever 
it suits the collector's convenience, the savings will 
usually not be forthcoming. If the saver does not know 
when to look for the visitor the temptations to spend are 
pretty sure to be too strong for resistance. There will 
be time, he thinks, to lay by something more before the 
visitor comes, and meanwhile this particular sum may 
go for this time. Moreover, if the collector comes irregu- 
larly, visits are very likely to occur at times which are 
embarrassing for the saver, and between getting ready 
for calls which are not made, and receiving calls which 
are not expected, the whole matter is apt to become an 
annoyance and to be given up. 

The second matter is even more important. For the 



262 HOW TO HELP 

most part this work is carried on among the self-sup- 
porting poor, who do not ask aid, or ask it only under 
stress of unusual circumstances. But almost invariably 
when such a system of visiting is put into practice some 
families of a different class will ask for the collector to 
call on them, not with any real intention of saving, but 
for the sake of getting in touch with someone who may 
presumably have much influence in procuring relief. 
After the first few sums have been saved the visitor is 
met with a tale of want and of pressing need for a 
little help, and if the response is favorable the need 
recurs regularly. 

It is advisable for visitors, when such a request is 
proffered, to decline absolutely to give help themselves, 
reporting the situation, if circumstances seem to justify 
doing so, to some relief-giving agency, and giving 
through that whatever they may wish to bestow. If they 
yield to the temptation to give aid themselves, they are 
apt to find that their visits are becoming confined to the 
class of chronic applicants, and that the self-respecting 
poor refuse to have anything to do with the system, not 
caring to class themselves in any way with those who 
are using it merely as an excuse for alms getting. 

If these two precautions are observed, however, the 
savings work offers an unusually good field for the many 
who cannot spare much time for the study of conditions 
or assume much responsibility for the care of families, 
but who would fain do some actual work and see at 
first hand something of the lives of other classes. 



CHAPTER XXI 

FRESH AIR AND SUMMER WORK 

Probably there never was a time when some fresh air 
work was not done. The individual worker among the 
poor, finding some child in need of a change and of dif- 
ferent treatment, or some tired woman requiring a rest 
and more abundant nourishment, would naturally think 
of securing a place in the country or at the seaside for a 
time. Abroad the work grew up along different lines, 
in the shape of a country week during which children 
were received as guests in the country, while at a dif- 
ferent season their little hosts received their turn in 
the city week spent in town. In this exchange the idea 
seems to have been educational, rather than philan- 
thropic. 

In its present organized form the fresh air movement 
is decidedly new. It was in 1877 that Mr. Willard Par- 
sons, a young clergyman in Sherman, Pa., urged upon 
his congregation their duty toward the children of the 
slums, with the result that a certain number of them 
decided to invite a child or children into their homes for 
a two weeks' stay during the heat of summer, and the 
minister set off for New York to find the children. 
"They were to be the guests of the people of Sherman 
for a fortnight," says Riis, "and a warm welcome 
awaited them there. A right royal one they received 
when, in a few days, the pastor returned, bringing with 
him nine little waifs, the poorest and the neediest he had 
found in the tenements to which he went with his offer. 

263 



264 H W TO HELP 

They were not such children as the farmfolk thereabouts 
saw every day, but they took them into their homes, and 
their hearts warmed to them day by day as they saw how 
much they needed their kindness; how under its influ- 
ence they grew into bright and happy children like their 
own; and when, at the end of the two weeks, nine 
brown-faced, laughing boys and girls went back to tell 
of the wondrous things they had heard and seen, it was 
only to make room for another little band. Nor has ever 
a summer passed since that first, which witnessed sixty 
city urchins made happy at Sherman, that has not seen 
the hospitable houses of the Pennsylvania village opened 
to receive holiday parties like those from the slums of 
the far city." 1 

The idea took so rapidly that it quite outgrew the 
management of a single man. From place after place 
came in offers to receive the children, until New York 
was sending out parties far beyond her own borders. 
Securing the money for transportation and for the neces- 
sary additions to the children's wardrobes became a 
large — never a troublesome — question. For a few years 
the Evening Post undertook this duty, but before long 
passed it over to the Tribune, which has collected it, 
under the name of the Tribune Fresh Air Fund, ever 
since. Other funds were started in New York for the 
same purpose, and other cities took up the idea and 
enlarged and varied it. 

Today there are few large cities through the North 
which do not carry on more or less — generally more — 
fresh air work. The original plan has been supplemented 
in various ways. One difficulty appeared soon after the 
beginning of the movement. It was possible to secure 

1 Riis, Children of the Poor, p. 154. 



FRESH AIR AND SUMMER WORK 265 

hosts for hundreds of children, but the number who 
needed the holiday ran up into the thousands. It was 
not desirable to send large numbers of the children very 
far from the city; the expense of transportation alone, 
in spite of the liberal reductions the railroad companies 
made, rendered this objectionable, and the dislike of the 
parents to send their children so far away and the added 
possibility of some disaster during the long trips lurked 
in the minds of the managers. Moreover, occasionally 
children would be frightened by the loneliness and still- 
ness of an isolated country house ; they missed their 
companions, and the benefits they should have received 
from their holiday were negatived by their homesick- 
ness. Also, it was evident that there would be an 
economy of effort in sending large groups of children 
together, and keeping them under one management. So 
fresh air homes were opened in which from twenty to a 
hundred or more children could be received at one time, 
kept a week or a fortnight, and then sent back, making 
room for another company. 

But this did not meet the whole need. Some children 
could not leave their homes for two weeks, or even for 
one, so excursions were organized, in which children 
were taken out for a sail or into the country, and given 
all the fresh air and all the good times which could be 
crowded into one day. Variations of the original plan 
sprang into being. Boys' and girls' camps were or- 
ganized under the supervision of churches, or Christian 
Associations, or clubs or settlements. Hospital Guilds 
opened floating hospitals in which sick babies with their 
mothers could be taken out into the fresh air of the 
ocean for a day, or, if the child's condition demanded it, 
for successive days. For the babies who needed con- 



266 HOW TO HELP 

tinuous treatment were added hospitals by the water's 
edge, where good air and proper feeding and constant 
attendance could give them whatever chance might be 
attainable for a healthful beginning of life. 

The benefits of this work were so marked among the 
children that it was inevitable it should be extended to 
adults. Vacation homes were opened for working girls, 
or for mothers with babies, or for invalids who had 
small chance of recovery under city conditions. 
Promptly a difficulty arose. Often a mother with a baby 
needed rest and change urgently, but as there were other 
children besides the baby, she could not be received. 
So in some places family camps or homes were opened, 
to which such a mother might go with her flock about 
her. There are obvious difficulties about the manage- 
ment of such a camp, so its use has never been very 
widespread, but where established it has been found 
satisfactory and very helpful. 

In cities in which fresh air work has been organized, 
the volunteer worker can find abundant chances for use- 
fulness. Ordinarily a certain number of paid agents are 
employed, but the work is large, and the summer is 
short and help is welcome. Whether the children are to 
be sent as guests to private homes, or received in some 
home or camp maintained by an association, it is essen- 
tial that they should be sent out clean and free from all 
possibility of conveying any infectious or contagious 
disease. To secure this result needs repeated instruc- 
tions, and much visiting to make sure that the instruc- 
tions have been carried out. Getting the children to and 
from the station when going and returning, warning the 
parents of the time when they must be prepared to start, 
notifying them of the hour of the children's return, and 



FRESH AIR AND SUMMER WORK 267 

making sure that the small people reach their homes in 
safety in case the parents fail to meet them at the train — 
all these details take time and effort, and can be per- 
formed admirably by volunteers. 

In places where there is no organized fresh air work 
it is always possible for an individual worker or for a 
small group to carry on as much as their means and time 
will permit. Ordinarily it is not difficult to find a limited 
number of country families who will receive one or two 
children for a couple of weeks during the summer, and 
sometimes they will be willing to keep the same children 
for a longer time or to welcome several relays. The 
best way of finding such places is to write early in the 
spring or before the spring, to clergymen throughout 
the neighboring villages and small towns, asking them to 
present the matter to their parishioners and to see if 
some one will not be willing to take a child or children. 
Sometimes it is well to describe the situation of a given 
child, asking whether it cannot be received for a given 
time. This, of course, involves making up one's mind at 
an early date what children one will try to get into the 
country, but when the work is to be conducted on a 
small scale this is desirable for several reasons. 

If favorable responses are received to such requests, 
considerable pains should be taken to find out whether 
any of those who have given a general invitation to the 
children have any preferences as to what children they 
shall receive. Even for a visit of one or two weeks it 
makes a great deal of difference whether or not a child 
is suited to its environment. The future of the work, as 
well as the immediate benefit of the child, demands that 
care should be taken to send the right ones to given 
families. 



268 HOW TO HELP 

A second point of much importance is that the child 
should be sent out in a satisfactory condition. If chil- 
dren are sent unclean and ragged, the work in the 
locality to which they go is likely to receive a sharp 
check. By writing to the organized charities or to any 
fresh air association of the larger cities, one can learn 
what is considered necessary in preparing children for 
the country. Naturally greater care is needed when they 
go as guests in private families than when they are sent 
to some fresh air home, where the managers are accus- 
tomed to receiving children from the poorest quarters, 
and are equipped with proper facilities for repairing any 
deficiencies in their preparation. Even in the latter case, 
however, it will probably be found that the managers 
have a well defined standard to which the children must 
conform before their admission. 

Money will be needed for transportation both for the 
children and for whoever conducts them, as they cannot 
safely be sent without a guardian. Probably it will be 
found necessary, also, to provide shoes or to add in some 
way to their wardrobe. The childish idea of what is 
needed for a two weeks' visit is limited, and frequently 
is unenlightened by any wider view on the parents' parts. 
"I guess they'll take care of you where you're going," 
says the mother, and Johnnie and Jennie are ready to 
start off tranquilly in the clothes they wear and nothing 
else. Here, again, this does not matter so much when 
they are sent to some fresh air home, but for private 
families the arrival of guests thus unprovided is some- 
times embarrassing. 

The individual worker or the small group attempting 
this work in a locality where it has not yet been tried 
will certainly meet some difficulties and discouragements 



FRESH AIR AND SUMMER WORK 269 

before they can get it well under way. Some parents 
will be found who are suspicious of their motives, and 
some children who know nothing about the country and 
are a trifle afraid to venture into unfamiliar regions. A 
few years ago Miss Daskam published a clever story, 
"Ardelia in Arcady," setting forth the disappointment of 
a young woman who, finding a neglected little girl on the 
streets, straightway carries her off for a country vaca- 
tion. With a sublime disregard for the ordinary methods 
of fresh air workers, the young woman makes no prepa- 
rations of any kind, no enquiry into the child's tastes and 
habits, no effort to provide companionship or to put her 
into the right environment. She simply takes her from 
the streets and places her in an isolated country family, 
where there are no children and where she is as abso- 
lutely a foreigner in a strange land as her parents would 
have been if dropped into a Thibetan lamasery. Natu- 
rally, the child doesn't like it, makes her escape, returns 
to the city, and the story closes with her exultant reflec- 
tion in the midst of the familiar noise and dirt and com- 
panionship: "Gee! Noo Yawk's de place." 

A few children of Ardelia's kind certainly exist, who, 
even when placed with all possible care, will be so home- 
sick that they must be returned without waiting for the 
close of their holiday, but they are unusual. Among 
children the worker is far more likely to encounter the 
attitude of Miss Kelley's delightful Little Citizens, with 
their longing envy of the "unhealthy" children who have 
been sent out by "de fresh air." But among adults, per- 
sons will more frequently be found who have become so 
accustomed to the slums that they are ill at ease else- 
where. 

"I shall never forget my disappointment the first time 



270 HOW TO HELP 

I tried to do any fresh air work/' said one non-profes- 
sional worker. "Mrs. Quinn was a woman I had been 
interested in for years. She lived in one of the dirtiest 
and noisiest parts of the city, where the trains just out- 
side the window made it necessary to speak at the top 
of one's voice for the greater part of the time, where the 
air was so black with their smoke that she couldn't dry 
her clothes out of doors, and where the streets were so 
crowded and unsafe that her constant effort was to per- 
suade her six children to stay in the house. She was 
absolutely worn out with years of hard work and under- 
nourishment, and the doctors said she must have rest and 
change. So we planned for her to go to the country. 

"It was hard work to persuade her, for she was cer- 
tain some of the children would be run over if she didn't 
keep them in sight all the time. We engaged a woman, 
a trusted friend and neighbor of hers, to take care of the 
house and children. We planned for her to take the 
baby with her, and we arranged that her sister should 
go, too, to keep her from being lonesome. We promised 
to call at the house every day and to send her instant 
word if anything went wrong. And finally, with the aid 
of every one of her friends and relatives, we got her to 
go. I went over to the station to see her off, rather 
doubtful whether she wouldn't refuse to leave at the last 
moment, but she lived up to her agreement. There she 
was, with her baby and her bags and her sister, and a 
most dolorous countenance. But she did not want to 
seem ungrateful. 

" 'I guess I'll like it after I get down there, Miss 
Winslow,' she said, essaying to smile while tears forced 
their way; T guess it's just like when my other sister 
died. I thought I couldn't ever stand it, but I got used 



FRESH AIR AND SUMMER WORK 2 Jl 

to that, and I suppose I'll get used to this, too.' And in 
this spirit of heroic resignation she went off to recu- 
perate, while I was left to wonder whether the doctor's 
orders were the best ones to follow, after all, in that 
case. I concluded they weren't when she came back in 
five days, absolutely unable to stand her homesickness.' , 

Cases like this are very unusual, but when they are 
met the benefits of an outing, without its disadvantages, 
can sometimes be secured by a series of day excursions 
scattered through the summer. In Boston of late a day 
camp for consumptives has met with considerable suc- 
cess. It is designed to meet the situation of those who 
need fresh air and sanitarium treatment, but who cannot 
leave their homes altogether. In the morning they come 
or are brought to the camp, where they spend the day 
absolutely in the open air, going back at night, to return 
the next morning. They secure the rest, the fresh air, 
the instruction in the proper methods of caring for them- 
selves, and all without leaving their homes. An exten- 
sion of this principle might profitably be worked out for 
the benefit of some of the worn-out wives and mothers 
who cannot leave their homes for more than a day at a 
time, yet who are in urgent need of a rest and change. 

Sending out children for country vacations when it 
cannot be done through the medium of some organiza- 
tion involves so much responsibility and so much atten- 
tion to details, that an individual working alone will 
probably find it better to undertake only day excursions. 
These may be made as large or as small, as simple or as 
elaborate, as one chooses. The visitors who have been 
collecting stamp savings or taking charge of a home 
library can connect this work effectively with the win- 
ter's program by taking the groups of children with 



2J2, 



HOW TO HELP 



whom they have already established relations. The day 
will be the more successful for the friendship already 
begun, and the future work will be the pleasanter for 
the memory of a happy time together. If the visitor is 
inexperienced it is well to begin with a small group, or 
else to take only children who are strictly well behaved. 
The exhilaration of a holiday is sometimes too much for 
childish self-restraint, and if the group is large a few 
unmanageable members may make serious trouble. Or- 
dinarily, though, there is little danger of this. The 
novelty of the occasion, the enjoyment of the games, and 
the new sights of the country, the rapture of the out of 
door meal — the luncheon is a most important feature of 
the day — the desire to do everything and see everything 
which anybody else has or can — all this will occupy the 
children pretty fully, and make their management very 
little trouble. 

Undoubtedly more of this informal fresh air work 
would be done if the need for it were recognized. In 
the large cities fresh air work is tolerably comprehensive. 
In some places it really seems as though the supply had 
very nearly exceeded the demand, and children who 
haven't been to the country are at a premium. But in 
the smaller cities little is done, owing to an impression 
that the children don't need it. There aren't any well 
defined slums, anyhow, and there's a good deal of fresh 
air all around, and there are parks within easy reaching 
distance, and there isn't any need of copying what is 
doubtless very useful in a large city. So the average 
citizen thinks, and dismisses the matter, forgetting that 
a distance which he can easily traverse in car or carriage 
may be prohibitive for children who cannot pay car 
fares, and who do not know where the breathing spots 



FRESH AIR AND SUMMER WORK 273 

are to be found, and who may be as closely confined to 
their shabby streets as any denizen of the slums to his 
quarters. 

"I was once taking a group of boys of from ten to 
thirteen years old to a fresh air cottage from one of our 
smaller cities," said a professional worker, "and to pass 
the time proposed that each should tell about the last 
time he was in the country. There was a dead silence. 

" 'Why, boys/ I asked, 'haven't any of you ever been 
in the country?' 

" 'He has,' cried several, pointing to one little urchin. 

" 'Well, tell us about it, Harry,' I urged. 

"Harry's air of importance vanished suddenly. 'Well, 
I don't remember much about it, Miss Green/ he 
answered slowly. 'I wasn't but six years old, and my 
father he took me to the park, but I don't recollect what 
it was like.' 

"And that was the nearest approach to a knowledge 
of the country I could find among seven boys, all grow- 
ing up in a small city, which thought itself well provided 
with parks and breathing places. On another occasion 
I was taking a family party out for a day in the country, 
and the youngest, a boy of nine, was so rapturously 
absorbed in looking from the window that he attracted 
my attention. 

" 'He isn't used to the street cars, is he?' I asked his 
mother casually. 

" 'No, ma'am/ she replied, judicially, 'I couldn't say 
he is just used to 'em. He was on 'em once before, but 
he was only two then, and I guess he don't remem- 
ber it.' " 

Besides fresh air work there are other seasonal activi- 
ties which afford some opportunities for volunteer 
18 



274 



HOW TO HELP 



workers. Vacation schools and play grounds present 
some openings, but in both there is an absolute necessity 
for regularity and considerable need for technical train- 
ing of some kind. The importance of such work cannot 
be overestimated, but it cannot be taken up incidentally 
by inexperienced workers. Ordinarily such enterprises 
can only be attempted through an organization, and the 
major part of their work must be carried on by trained 
employees. 

A much easier form of activity is offered in connec- 
tion with the flower missions. This is a form of work 
which requires a minimum of machinery. It may be 
carried on by any one who is able to get into the country 
to gather flowers, or who has a garden to supply them. 
There is no difficulty about finding recipients. Simply 
go through the poorer quarters with a bouquet, and it 
will be a wonder if some child does not proffer a request 
for "Just one flower, please." As soon as one has made 
the venture and found it successful, a crowd will spring 
up, and the worker's hands will be emptied long before 
the demand is exhausted. 

Where a formal organization has been adopted the 
Flower Mission usually receives not only flowers, but 
fruits and reading matter from the surrounding coun- 
try, and undertakes to distribute these gifts among the 
poor, trying to make them go, as far as possible, to those 
who would not receive such remembrances from other 
sources. Generally such an organization receives its 
flowers twice or three times a week, and as these are 
sent in quantity, there is usually a constant demand for 
volunteers to make up the flowers into bunches and to 
carry them to the recipients. This is work involving no 
responsibility and requiring no training, so that it makes 



FRESH AIR AND SUMMER WORK 275 

an easy and pleasant way of beginning for anyone 
who wishes to take some part in philanthropic work, 
and to build up an acquaintance naturally among the 
poor. 



CHAPTER XXII 

HOME LIBRARY CLUBS 

Like many other good things, the home library work 
comes to us from Massachusetts, where it was inaugu- 
rated in 1887 by Mr. Charles Birtwell, of the Boston 
Children's Aid Society. His account of its inception 
gives so good an idea of the spirit of the work that it 
may be quoted at length : 

"I had been connected with the Children's Aid Society 
but a short time when many avenues of work opened 
up before me, and it was quite perplexing to see how to 
make my relations to the various children I became ac- 
quainted with real and vital. Among other things the 
children ought to have the benefit of good reading and 
to become lovers of good books. Indeed, a great many 
things needed to be done for and by the children. Out 
of this opportunity and need the Home Library was 
evolved. 

"A little bookcase was designed. It was made of 
white wood, stained cherry, with a glass door and Yale 
lock. It contained a shelf for fifteen books, and above 
that another for juvenile periodicals. The whole thing, 
carefully designed and neatly made, was pleasing to the 
eye. 

"I asked my little friend Rosa at the North End, 
Barbara over in South Boston, and Giovanni at the 
South End, if they would like little libraries in their 
homes of which they should be librarians, and from 
which their playmates or workmates might draw books, 

276 



HOME LIBRARY CLUBS 27J 

the supply to be replenished from time to time. They 
welcomed the idea heartily, and with me set about 
choosing the boys and girls of their respective neigh- 
borhoods who were to form the library groups. Then 
a time was appointed for the first meeting of each 
library. The children who had been enrolled as mem- 
bers met with me in the little librarian's home, and 
while one child held the lamp, another the screwdriver, 
another the screws, and the rest looked on, we sought 
a secure spot on the wall of the living room of the 
librarian's family, and there fastened the library. 

"I remember that to start the first library off with 
vigor, and secure the benefit of a little esprit de corps 
from the beginning, I went with the children the eve- 
ning before the establishment of the library to see the 
cyclorama of the battle of Gettysburg. We rode in a 
driving snowstorm in the street cars from the North 
End, and had a gala evening. We got a bit acquainted, 
and on the next evening, the time appointed for the lay- 
ing of the corner-stone of the whole Home Library 
structure, you may be sure the children without excep- 
tion were on hand. I believe we had to wait a little 
while for Jennie, who lived across the hallway from 
Rosa, to 'finish her dishes;' then up went the library. 
Very quickly the second library was established in 
South Boston, the third at the South End, and before 
long some neighborhoods were dotted with libraries." 

In the working out of the plan it was found necessary 
to have some regular meeting time for the library group, 
and to have some visitor who would meet with them at 
this time. Ordinarily, the group consists of from eight 
to twelve members. The visitor meets with them once 
a week, sees that the books taken out are returned, helps 



278 HOW TO HELP 

the children to choose new ones, talks over what they are 
reading, and then devotes the rest of the meeting to any 
kind of a good time which appeals to that particular 
club. 

Naturally the kind of good time demanded varies 
widely according to the taste of the children and the 
ability of the leader. Classes in cooking, sewing, car- 
pentering, gymnastic work, basketry and modelling; 
games, especially the quieter kinds, which can be played 
indoors without drawing down the wrath of the house- 
wife in whose domain the meeting is held; stories and 
songs and recitations and amateur — exceedingly ama- 
teur — dramatics ; these singly or in any imaginable com- 
bination may be utilized as fancy suggests or the occa- 
sion demands. 

It will be seen that there is here an almost unlimited 
field for the visitor's abilities. While the club may and 
frequently does serve to give the children some idea of 
the pleasure of reading and of the joy and strength to 
be found in literature, still the books are largely a pre- 
text, an opportunity for the far more important matter 
of getting into real, personal touch with the children. 
To establish relations of trust and liking with the club 
members, to lead them to look upon the visitor as 
genuinely sympathetic and interested in them, one to 
whom they may turn quite naturally and simply, as of 
right, in any perplexity or difficulty — that is the ideal of 
home library work. 

In the course of striving to realize this ideal many 
other good ends may and indeed must be incidentally 
achieved. One especially good feature of the work is 
that it is carried on in the home, and that its whole 
tendency is to strengthen the ties of home and family. 



HOME LIBRARY CLUBS 



279 



It not only teaches the child that it is possible to have 
a good time elsewhere than on the street, — any club or 
class work might do that, — but it shows him that it is 
entirely possible to enjoy himself in his own home, and 
it establishes a center of interest for the whole house- 
hold. Naturally what goes on in the home itself pos- 
sesses a peculiar interest for the parents and older 
children; moreover, these frequently become sharers in 
the fun. 

"I don't think Mrs. Jones is ever absent from a meet- 
ing of the club," remarked one visitor, "and it is a 
constant surprise to me to hear her laugh. She looked 
such a miserable, dragged out thing when we began 
going there. I believe she was simply dying from 
monotony, and she enjoys the games and the singing as 
much as the smallest child there." 

Another good feature of the work is the occasion it 
gives the visitor to open up to the children some of the 
avenues of enjoyment from which they are cut off by 
their ignorance of the opportunities provided for them. 
Most cities and towns offer certain advantages which 
are seldom utilized by those who most need them. The 
people are not indifferent to these ; they are ignorant of 
them. Again and again the visitor will find children 
who have never been to the parks, who do not know 
that there is a public library or a picture gallery or an 
art museum; or if they have heard that such things 
exist, their existence remains to them a mere abstract 
fact with no relation whatever to their own lives. The 
routine of life is barren and ugly, and they do not know 
that beauty of art and beauty of nature are at hand, only 
waiting for them to come. To show them what their 
city offers, and to teach them to enjoy it, means happi- 



280 HOW TO HELP 

ness now and resource against temptation later on. 

Another advantage of the work is the opportunity it 
offers to detect among the children physical or mental 
trouble in the earlier stages, when remedial treatment 
may be effective. In cities in which medical inspection 
of the school children has been established, and is car- 
ried on adequately, this may not be important, but else- 
where it is no small part of the visitor's opportunity for 
usefulness. 

The visitor should be on the alert, not only to find out 
if any trouble exists, but to make sure that it is 
remedied. It is not enough, for instance, to find out 
that a child is having trouble with his eyes and to tell 
the parents where to take it for treatment. The poor 
are often strangely unappreciative of the danger of 
neglect in such matters, and without the slightest inten- 
tion of letting the child suffer, the visit to the hospital 
or dispensary will be delayed indefinitely, until the visi- 
tor decides that the only thing to be done is to take the 
child in person. Even then the matter is not ended, for 
endless effort may be required to ensure the observance 
of the directions given. The visitor should also be on 
the watch for any symptoms of dullness or stupidity in 
the children, and should any such appear, should take 
pains to find out what is the cause, and whether it can 
be removed. Often the whole affair will prove trivial; 
sometimes it will indicate the beginning of trouble 
which, if unchecked, may involve loss of sight or hear- 
ing or some equally serious result. 

The visitor will certainly encounter many difficulties, 
some obvious, some unanticipated. Racial disagree- 
ments make trouble sometimes, though not as often as 
might be expected. When they exist, however, they are 



HOME LIBRARY CLUBS 2 8l 

apt to be rather insurmountable, as one visitor found 
who had a promising club in a neighborhood of Irish 
and Italians. For the first three meetings all went 
admirably, but in the fourth, apropos of some historical 
allusion, trouble suddenly loomed on the horizon in the 
shape of a discussion as to the real discoverer of 
America. The Italians as one boy upheld the claims of 
their countryman, while the Irish swore by Lief Erick- 
son, on the general principle that "Columbus was only a 
dago, and didn't know nothing, nohow." In vain the 
visitor essayed to settle the difficulty. The session broke 
up in confusion, a free fight — which may have had noth- 
ing to do with the matter — occurred on the street within 
half an hour, and it was never possible to get that club 
together again. 

The commonest difficulty lies in the numerous petty 
quarrels and jealousies within a neighborhood, and the 
visitor's tact and ingenuity will be strained to the utmost 
to keep these out of the clubs. "It seems to me," sighed 
one weary worker, "that there hasn't been a week this 
winter when half my children's parents have been on 
speaking terms with the other half. There are innumer- 
able factions and they're changing from one to the other 
all the time, but the proportion remains about the same. 
The children take it up, and Mamie can't come because 
Jennie does, and Jimmie will have to go home unless 
Johnnie is turned out, and Lily and Lulu may take out 
books but mayn't speak to any of the others, until I feel 
as if the club is nothing but an embodied centrifugal 
force with me in the center vainly trying to act as a 
centripetal influence." 

And pettiness is not the only bad feature of these 
neighborhood quarrels. We hear much of the kindness 



282 HOW TO HELP 

of the poor to one another, but the visitor comes to 
realize that they may be cruel, too, with a cruelty which 
knows just how to strike most tellingly. 

"Why weren't the girls at the club yesterday, Mrs. 
Blank?" asked the visitor. 

Mrs. Blank hesitated, and then — she had come to 
know the visitor well — replied almost tearfully: 

"It's just like this, Miss Brown. They can't wear 
their winter hats now; it's 'most July. But their pa's 
been loafing all of three months, since the works shut 
down, and I ain't got any money for hats. That Sal- 
vation Army store 'round the corner had some little 
straw hats for ten cents apiece — real pretty they were — 
and I got a couple of 'em, and I washed and ironed 
some old ribbons Mrs. Dexter, the lady I wash for, gave 
me, and I trimmed up them hats till they did look real 
elegant. But the Johnson children saw me buying them, 
and they told the rest, and now whenever my girls go 
out, they're all after them, and they shout 'Hallelujah! 
hallelujah!' at them, and call them 'Salvation Lassies,' 
and want to know where their drum is, and things like 
that till they just can't stand it, and I don't blame 'em. 
I guess I'll have to keep 'em indoors till my man gets 
work again." 

The visitor who has gone into the work with high 
enthusiasm and lofty ideals is apt to feel discouraged 
when these quarrels over trifles appear on every hand, 
and time and strength must go in trying to reconcile the 
disputants, or at least so to conciliate them that their 
differences shall not keep the children from the library. 
Nevertheless, in this very work of conciliation may lie 
one of the most hopeful opportunities of the club. The 
little group may become a unifying influence for the 



HOME LIBRARY CLUBS 283 

neighborhood, supplying a common topic, and helping to 
sink petty differences in a general interest in the chil- 
dren's enjoyment and progress. It may even, if the 
worker is so inclined, become a kind of nucleus for 
general neighborhood work, serving naturally as an 
introduction to clubs and classes for the elder members 
of the community. 

If the worker does not wish to attempt anything so 
ambitious as this, it is still possible to bring in the 
parents occasionally, and to interest them as a group in 
some of the outing's, the visits to the parks or museums 
or public buildings which the visitor will probably devise 
from time to time for the children. It will usually be 
the mothers who respond to an invitation to share in 
these, but this is as it should be, since their lives are 
monotonous in the extreme, and anything which varies 
their routine is worth while in itself, apart from its 
indirect influence in the promotion of neighborly har- 
mony. It should, however, always be borne in mind 
that the worker is dealing with a home club, and that 
the ideal is not attained unless the whole family group, 
father, mother and children, join in the interest, and at 
least occasionally share in the program. 

What has been said in connection with the penny 
provident collecting of the necessity for regularity and 
abstention from almsgiving, applies with even greater 
force to the home library visitor. If visitors are irregu- 
lar in their attendance on the club sessions, the clubs 
will soon cease to exist. If they themselves act as 
almoners, the clubs will soon be shunned by the chil- 
dren of self-respecting parents, and will run consider- 
able risk of becoming agencies of harm rather than of 
good. 



284 H0W T0 HELP 

Another consideration must be borne in mind. As 
any neighborhood group is very likely to include rep- 
resentatives of many forms of faith and unfaith, most 
home library associations have pledged themselves, 
tactily or explicitly, to respect all religious convictions 
and to say nothing in praise or disparagement of any 
creed or sect. This means, of course, that no direct 
religious teachings may be given. Ethical and moral 
ideals may and should be inculcated, but visitors should 
be mindful of their obligations to the children's parents, 
and should avoid the slightest approach to proselytism. 
The books should be carefully selected with this in view, 
and any discussion of differences in faith, or of the 
tenets of any body of believers, should be checked at its 
beginning. Nothing will more surely or deservedly 
cripple the usefulness of a home library than careless- 
ness in regard to this matter. 

It is not easy for an individual or a small group to 
start home library work unaided, as in addition to 
workers, money is needed to provide cases, to secure 
and keep up a supply of books, and to meet incidental 
expenses. In some places the cost of the effort is 
materially reduced by cooperation with the public 
library, which may furnish books free for this purpose. 
In other places the work is carried on by the public 
library itself, as a natural extension of its legitimate 
activity. In cities where this is not the custom and 
where the library authorities are not willing to coop- 
erate, general contributions of books may be secured, 
or Sunday school classes or King's Daughters Circles 
may be persuaded to provide libraries as well as workers. 

The methods of securing the equipment and visitors 
must vary from place to place, but there is little room 



JiOME LIBRARY CLUBS 285 

for variation in the really important features of the 
work, which are that it should be carried on in the home, 
that the clubs should be kept so small that each child 
may be well known to the visitor, and that the latter 
should be on the alert to see and utilize every oppor- 
tunity for friendly helpfulness to the children, the 
parents and the neighborhood. Without a visitor who is 
able and willing to take this role, the work will always 
be unsatisfactory, no matter how good the selection of 
books offered, or how perfect the equipment in other 
respects ; but with such a visitor it is difficult to see how 
any other form of work can afford opportunity for more 
far-reaching and valuable results. 



CHAPTER XXIII 



BOYS CLUBS 



Some observer has divided the human race into men, 
women and small boys, declaring that while a little girl 
is usually a woman in miniature, a boy is not an em- 
bryonic man, but an entirely distinct species, with his 
own fairly well defined laws, traditions and ideals. Cer- 
tain it is that the boys of the poorer classes present a 
more apparent, and, in some respects, a more urgent 
problem than do the girls. The girl can usually be 
made more useful about the house than the boy, and 
this, coupled with the fact that even the most careless 
or the most handicapped parents feel more responsibility 
for keeping their girls off of the streets at unseemly 
hours than they do for the boys, and the further fact 
that in every class the conventional standards are higher 
for the girls than for their brothers, tends to keep them 
from open breaches of the law. Their lives may be 
dull and narrow; they may be set to work too early, or 
brought up under conditions which make it next to 
impossible that they should fulfil their future duties of 
wifehood and motherhood in any but the most unsatis- 
factory manner; but the chances are that the majority 
will keep within the conventional bounds, and that the 
proportion who will ever see the inside of a police cell 
is very much smaller than in the case of the boys. 

In fact, the conditions of life for boys in many of our 
cities are admirably fitted to make criminals of them. 
In many places the street is the boy's recognized play- 

286 



BOYS' CLUBS 



287 



ground; in some he has no other. But since the streets 
are primarily intended for the traffic of the city, and 
since the small boy's most innocent amusements will 
probably interfere seriously with this traffic, it follows 
that many things in themselves perfectly harmless or 
even commendable must be forbidden to the street boy. 
Respect for authority is not his strongest characteristic, 
under any circumstances, and when he finds that a game 
of ball on the street, or of marbles or tag on the side- 
walk, is forbidden under almost the same penalties, 
enforced in precisely the same way, as petty theft or 
even more serious offences, his ideas of moral values are 
apt to become confused. In one city recently two little 
fellows were brought into court charged with having 
tied strings to tin cans and dragged them over the side- 
walk. Of course, the noise was unpleasant to anyone 
in the vicinity; but equally of course, the little fellows 
who found themselves arrested, brought into court, lec- 
tured and finally released under threat of some unde- 
fined but dreadful penalty if they ever repeated their 
offence, were not likely to be much impressed by the 
sweet reasonableness of the forces of law and order. 

The street boy almost inevitably tends to look upon 
the policeman as his natural enemy, bent upon depriv- 
ing him of every enjoyment, governed by a code 
unknown to him, of which the only comprehensible fea- 
ture is that it involves interfering with him whenever 
he is having a particularly good time. Naturally the 
boy sets himself to outwit the police, and without the 
slightest inclination toward viciousness, he may easily 
become a confirmed lawbreaker. 

Again on the street a boy finds companions of sorts. 
The instinct of association is strong in him; he allies 



288 HOW TO HELP 

himself with the others of his own neighborhood and 
the gang is born. But the gang cannot exist without 
associated activity of some kind. A boy's ideal of what 
is admirable and delightful involves above all else 
activity and daring. He is truly Rooseveltian in his 
liking for people who "do things." Moreover, the 
things must be both courageous and interesting. One 
student of the subject gives an amusing as well as an 
excellent illustration of this taste: 

"I once made a study of the small weekly magazines 
that are sold for a nickel, and that may be described as 
the yellow literature of boyhood. I pursued this study 
. . . because I felt that they were expert witnesses 
as to the boy's tastes. They are published to sell; the 
object of their existence is to make money and to make 
it out of boys; therefore, they must suit the taste of 
boys, and presumably succeed in doing so. In the very 
first one of these magazines that I read the hero starts 
out in the afternoon to go to a clambake. As he ap- 
proaches the seashore, where the festivity is to take 
place, he is confronted by a masked ruffian, who jumps 
out from behind a tree and puts a pistol to his head. 
The boy quickly but firmly knocks the masked ruffian 
down, takes away his pistol, and is about to tear off his 
mask, when he hears terrible yells coming from the 
direction of the beach and rushes through the woods 
just in time to find a bull about to kill one of the girls. 
He puts the bull out of business by the simple process 
of shooting out his eyes with the revolver; explains to 
the owner, who turns up just then, in a few well-chosen 
words, that the bull was making a nuisance of himself 
and had to be restrained; and then, immediately after a 
heavy dinner of clams and pie, he very appropriately 
takes part in a swimming race. He gets ahead of his 
rival in the race by rounding the mark inside of him, 
and is just going to win when the masked ruffian, with 
another masked ruffian, makes his appearance in a dory 



BOYS' CLUBS 289 

and begins batting him over the head with an oar — or 
rather trying to do so, for every time the masked ruf- 
fian strikes, the boy dives and comes up on the other 
side of the boat. At last the masked ruffian gets on to 
his rhythm and hits him just as he comes up. The boy 
is stunned by the blow and immediately sinks down 
bump onto the bottom, where he would have drowned 
if his defeated rival had not dived and rescued him. 
Well, these are just a few little preliminary stunts, intro- 
duced to whet the reader's appetite for the real climax, 
which comes later on in a ball game, in which, of course, 
the hero greatly distinguishes himself. 

"Now that story shows what is the boy's idea of 
spending a pleasant afternoon — the sort of routine that 
would seem to him thoroughly satisfactory and desir- 
able." 1 

The ordinary boy realizes that such delightful adven- 
tures are not for him, but nevertheless the street offers 
possibilities of danger and of daring. Unfortunately, 
most of the things involving these qualities are illegal, 
and the more interesting they are the more society 
frowns on them. Consequently the boy who is most 
admired by his companions is likely to be the greatest 
lawbreaker among them. It does not particularly mat- 
ter in what way he has broken the law, except that the 
greater the risk he ran, the greater his credit. Every 
other boy wishes to prove himself equally bold and 
adroit, and the easiest, almost the only way of proving 
his qualities, is to undertake illegal, immoral or criminal 
enterprises. Some of the most valuable characteristics 
of the boy, his activity, his daring, his love of adventure, 
his desire for association, his hero-worship, are respon- 
sible for the formation of gangs and their degeneration 

1 Joseph Lee, Proceedings of National Conference of Charities 
and Corrections, 1904, p. 463. 
19 



290 



HOW TO HELP 



into bands of young hoodlums. These qualities must 
have expression; if the boy can find a legitimate outlet 
for them, well and good ; if not, he will still find an out- 
let, but the result will be bad for the boy and for the 
community. 

Such an outlet the boys' club aims to give. "The club 
is the only weapon with which we can successfully 
attack the gang," says Jacob Riis. It appeals to pre- 
cisely the same qualities as does the gang, but in the 
club they are enlisted on the side of law and order and 
progressive development. The club gives the boy what 
he wants under conditions which make it good for him 
to have it. Its importance and its possibilities have 
come to be so clearly realized that in one form or 
another it is found in connection with almost all centers 
of social work. Its value is not confined to boys of the 
poorer classes. The Young Men's Christian Associa- 
tion all over the country has boys' departments in which 
the club is utilized for rich and poor alike. Every social 
settlement has its system of clubs among the boys of the 
neighborhood. In fact, one highly successful settle- 
ment, Lincoln House,, in Boston, grew out of a boys' 
club. Every active church has its guilds or other orga- 
nizations for boys. And apart from all these and from 
the innumerable small clubs formed by private initiative, 
there is a National League of Boys' Clubs, with huge 
clubs established in various cities, and a membership of 
many thousands. 

For those who are inaugurating work among boys 
one of the most interesting questions is the relative merit 
of the large versus the small club. Advocates of the 
latter form claim that the most important thing is to get 
hold of the individual boy, and to gain over him an 



BOYS' CLUBS 



291 



influence which shall be truly helpful through the 
troubled passage from boyhood to manhood. This, they 
say, is impossible unless the group is so small that the 
leader can know every boy personally and intimately. 
Most of the church and social settlement clubs are 
formed on this basis. The group is small, homogeneous, 
and is apt to be pretty closely guided by its leaders. 

The supporters of the larger club, on the other hand, 
insist that a leader may be well and effectively known 
by many more boys than he can possibly know himself, 
and that the esprit de corps developed by a large body, 
and its opportunities for a wider usefulness, more than 
offset the closer touch possible in the smaller group. 
The large clubs frequently have hundreds of members 
and possess their own buildings, containing gymna- 
siums, swimming tanks, game rooms, library, equip- 
ment for manual training, and for such special activities 
as may possess a peculiar interest for their constituency. 
These buildings are usually kept open every night in the 
week, — a point in their favor as against the small club, 
which rarely meets more than twice a week, and more 
generally only once. 

Whatever the relative advantages of the two forms of 
work, the beginner will certainly find it well to com- 
mence with a small group. The large club pre-supposes 
an organization, financial backing, an experienced leader 
and some volunteers, all very good things, but not 
always attainable. The small club, on the other hand, 
may be started anywhere and at any time, with a mini- 
mum of expense and formality. The only really indis- 
pensable thing is a good leader ; given that, the club will 
succeed, though its meetings be held in a barn or a hall 
bedroom, and its equipment be conspicuously non-exist- 



292 HOW TO HELP 

ent. Without that, its success will be problematic, 
though it have every possible advantage of building and 
equipment and cordial backing. 

The importance of the leader is so well recognized, 
and so much stress is laid on the responsibilities of his 
position, that one sometimes marvels how any human 
being can be found to accept work of such far-reaching 
demands. "Mr. Mason suggests as the easier qualifica- 
tions for such a leader that 'he must necessarily have the 
magnetism of Moses, the patience of Job and the wis- 
dom of Solomon.' " It is necessary to remember that 
here as elsewhere the worker may fall far short of the 
ideal and yet do good service. He really cannot suc- 
ceed, however, and would do better not to attempt the 
work unless he possesses tact, adaptibility, persistence 
and an unwearying interest in boys. 

In this, as in other lines of philanthropic work, it will 
be an advantage for the beginner if he can serve an 
apprenticeship with some established club under the 
direction of an experienced worker. In most cities and 
in many towns this is easily accomplished. Wherever 
boys' clubs are in operation there is a demand for 
workers, and a volunteer who is willing to take the work 
seriously will be welcomed with open arms. 

Where no such clubs exist the aspirant may gain 
some useful hints by studying the published accounts of 
work done elsewhere. The annual reports of boys' 
clubs, of settlements and of Young Men's Christian 
Associations will be found full of suggestions. It must 
be remembered, however, that the work must adapt itself 
to local conditions, and the beginner should be on his 
guard against concluding that because one form of 
activity has proved highly successful in a given place 



BOYS' CLUBS 



293 



it is necessarily suited to the boys of his neighborhood. 
An extremely practical and suggestive little manual for 
a would-be worker in this field is The Boy Problem, 
which, in addition to a study, based on psychological 
principles, of what boys' clubs should do and be, gives 
a useful bibliography of the literature of the subject. 1 

It will ordinarily be found that a club, to succeed, 
must include some form of physical activity. Even those 
associations which are formed for purely religious pur- 
poses have found it well to add a gymnasium, or to 
provide some practical and definite outlet for the boys' 
energies. As a rule boys are interested in most forms 
of handicraft or of manual training. Such work is 
valuable in the highest degree, not only for its immediate 
and practical results, but for its indirect training in the 
relation of cause and effect. "In any work of this kind 
a boy comes to see, with a sureness which admits of no 
discussion, that it is execution and not intention which 
counts, that no matter how good his meaning, his cor- 
ners will not fit unless his work is true. He comes to 
see the inevitability of an effect, and to realize the utter 
uselessness of hazy good will. And he carries the lesson 
on with him, out into the world outside of his club 
room." 

Ethical and moral instruction may and should be 
given in many ways, but indirect methods are best here. 
A boy is apt to resent direct preaching, while he is quick 
to take an implied moral, or to thrill to an ideal set 
before him without a too obvious application. He is not 
apt to accept the leader's ideas of what constitutes good- 
ness and manliness without discussion, but if the latter's 

1 The Boy Problem, by William Byron Forbush, The Pilgrim 
Press, Boston. 



294 H0W T0 HELP 

conceptions are well founded the boy will admit their 
value, if he is not pressed too hastily. 

One club worker tells a story illustrating the gradual 
effect of the club life. A club had been formed among 
some street boys who were frequently in conflict with 
the police. As it happened, no trouble of this kind 
occurred until something like six months after the club 
was formed, when one of its members was arrested for 
some aggravated offense, and fined. The leader laid 
before the club members the fact that this boy was 
guilty of a breach of g*ood citizenship, that there was no 
question of his guilt, and that they, as good citizens, 
ought to mark their disapproval of such practices by 
suspending him from the club or otherwise punishing 
him. The matter, however, would be left entirely to 
them for such action as they thought best. Greatly to 
the disappointment of the leader, the club unanimously 
voted not to suspend the erring member, but instead to 
raise a sum for the payment of his fine. 

Two years later, in the leader's absence, a somewhat 
similar case occurred. Without waiting for the leader's 
return, the boys promptly passed a resolution to the 
effect that the offending member had, by breaking the 
laws, brought discredit both on himself and on the club, 
and that in addition to the fine imposed by the city he 
must pay another fine to the club, or else withdraw from 
its membership. The influence of the club in this 
instance had been so slow as to be almost imperceptible 
from month to month, but it had been thorough. The 
group had been transformed from a gang of young 
hoodlums, banded together to outwit the law when pos- 
sible and to help one another evade the penalties for its 
infraction, to an association of young citizens, anxious 



BOYS' CLUBS 



295 



to do their part in maintaining the reputation of their 
city and their own organization. 

The importance, the methods and the possibilities of 
work of this kind among boys form far too large a sub- 
ject to be more than touched on here. It is work which 
is pressing more and more to the front as we come to 
realize the value of preventive as opposed to reforma- 
tory measures. It is difficult work, demanding patience, 
courage, and devotion of a high order ; but it is work of 
unlimited possibilities, and of results important beyond 
estimation. And for those who understand and love 
boys it is work of the highest interest, profitable in the 
time that now is and full of promise for the time to 
come. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

INDUSTRIAL AND EDUCATIONAL CLASSES 

Although many forms of manual training are often 
given in boys' clubs, such teaching is distinctly a 
secondary consideration. The main purpose of the club 
is to give the boy opportunities for legitimate enjoy- 
ment in helpful surroundings, to counterbalance the 
temptations of the street, and to throw around him in- 
fluences which shall guide his development along right 
channels. If carpentering and work in iron are found 
useful for these purposes, carpentering and work in iron 
will be taught, just as baseball and swimming and croki- 
nole will be encouraged, if they seem to meet the boys' 
needs. 

In the industrial classes, on the other hand, far more 
stress is laid on the training itself. The classes are 
usually formed under the guidance of some body which 
wishes to do more than merely to give this training, but 
nevertheless the teaching is felt to be important enough 
to justify their existence, even were there no ulterior 
purpose. Usually some form of industrial training may 
be found in connection with every working girls' club, 
every social settlement, every Young Men's and Young 
Women's Christian Association, and every institutional 
church. A full consideration of its various aspects 
would require far too much space ; it will be sufficient to 
discuss briefly a few of its forms in which the non-pro- 
fessional philanthropic worker can best render service. 

Cooking, sewing and educational classes are those in 
296 



INDUSTRIAL AND EDUCATIONAL 297 

which volunteer service is most apt to be sought, per- 
haps because it is more easily secured for these than for 
classes demanding special technical training. Of these 
perhaps the cooking classes are the most directly and 
obviously useful. It is a truism that the poverty of the 
poor is rendered worse by the inability of many of the 
housewives to get the best returns from their household 
expenditures. They do not know how to buy to advan- 
tage, in the first place, nor how to cook properly what 
they have bought, in the second. There are numerous 
exceptions, of course, but too often the frying-pan rep- 
resents their chief idea of cookery. The relative values 
of foods, the advantages of variety in diet, the adapta- 
tion of food to varying ages and conditions, the effect of 
different methods of cooking, — all these are sealed 
mysteries to them. It is accepted among them as a mas- 
culine peculiarity that men want meat, so if there is a 
man in the family the frying-pan comes into play; if 
there is not, the women and children too often live in a 
haphazard way on fruit and articles from the nearest 
delicatessen shop. 

"I'm trying to do a missionary work with my soup 
kettle," said the head of a day nursery. "Many of my 
mothers work in the mills all day and stop here for their 
children on their way home. They so often had a bag 
of bananas with them that I enquired about it and found 
that for a good many of them their supper would con- 
sist of bananas and tea. They've been working all day, 
and are tired out, and 7 as they say it's too much trouble 
to start up a fire and cook something hot. Think of 
nothing but bananas after eleven hours in the mills." 

Certainly one cannot blame a woman who after a long 
day's work feels no inclination to cook a hot meal, but 



298 HOW TO HELP 

often the case is not much better among those who are 
not working out of their own homes. Fruit, usually 
over-ripe, and therefore sold at a reduction; fried meat 
and potatoes, usually soggy from too much grease; pie 
of a baker's making, and tea in unlimited quantities : 
these are too often the staples of their diet. Workers in 
the temperance cause assert, with considerable appear- 
ance of reason, that bad cooking at home is one potent 
cause of drunkenness. No one will be inclined to dis- 
pute the likelihood of this who has ever spent a week at 
some fourth-class country hotel, or been obliged to fre- 
quent some of the poorer restaurants of a large city. 
However that may be, bad cooking is unquestionably 
one cause of the prevalence of dispepsia, of the lack of 
physique among the children, and of the early break- 
down of both men and women. 

Ordinarily the wives who are responsible for this bad 
cooking have had no possible chance of learning any- 
thing better. 

"More than half of my children come to school with 
the door key on a string around their necks," remarked 
a teacher in one of the poorer neighborhoods. 

"What does that mean?" asked the visitor. 

"That both the father and mother are at work," 
responded the teacher, "or that there isn't any father at 
home, and the mother works, so that the oldest child has 
to act as guardian of the house. The parents go off 
before the children are awake, and don't get back until 
six or seven in the evening. The children get their own 
breakfast and luncheon, or go without, just as they feel 
inclined." 

Naturally these children receive scant instruction in 
household duties from their over-tired and hurried 



INDUSTRIAL AND EDUCATIONAL 299 

mothers in the little time the latter are at home. The 
girls usually learn to make tea — a simple process, which 
merely involves keeping the teapot, filled with fresh 
water whenever it begins to get low, in a hot place on 
the stove, and adding tea from time to time. They pick 
up a knowledge of how to fry things, and evolve for 
themselves a theory that if you wish to stew the meat 
the natural and proper way is to put it on in hot water 
and boil as hard as possible. If the stew thus produced 
seems lacking in flavor, make up the deficiency with 
onions. They gain an empirical knowledge of market- 
ing by being sent out for what is needed. Armed with 
this training, they go, as soon as the school laws permit, 
into shop or factory, and remain there until they marry. 
They bring to the new menage absolutely no ideas of 
domestic economy or real home-making, and it speaks 
well for them and for their husbands that the experi- 
ment is so often reasonably successful. 

It is to remedy this lack of training that cooking 
classes are established. In some places cooking is taught 
in the public schools, but in many others it is looked 
upon as a fad with which the curriculum cannot be 
weighted. Even where it is so taught there will ordi- 
narily be found an ample field for cooking classes among 
those who for one reason or another have not been able 
to take advantage of this training. 

It will, of course, be much easier for the volunteer to 
undertake work along this line in connection with some 
body which has already established classes, and has 
ready at hand the meeting place, the equipment and the 
members. If this is not possible, however, such a class 
is not a difficult one to establish. To find a suitable 
meeting place is apt to be the greatest trouble. The 



3 oo HOW TO HELP 

ideal thing would be to meet in the kitchens of the mem- 
bers, as the teaching would then necessarily be adapted 
to the means of cooking actually possessed by the 
learners. For obvious reasons, however, the class mem- 
bers are apt to object to this method. In these days 
many churches have kitchens connected with their 
parish rooms, which offer an excellent place for such 
classes in connection with church work. Or, if a volun- 
teer worker has a long-suffering mother, she may find 
her own home affords an advantageous place of meeting. 

Two points need special attention in these classes: 
that the lessons should not involve the use of imple- 
ments the girls cannot well possess, and that the work 
should be kept practical. It must be remembered that 
in most of the homes of the poor there is not a large 
supply of kitchen furnishings, and the lessons should be 
given as nearly as possible under the conditions in which 
the learners must apply them. Common sense is neces- 
sary in the application of this principle. Some workers 
tell proudly of having used a tin can for a rolling pin, 
and punched holes in the bottom of another can to make 
it serve as a pepper shaker, and so on. This is carrying 
adaptability to a ridiculous extreme. With kitchen fur- 
nishings as cheap as they are in these days, any woman 
who keeps house at all can contrive to have a rolling 
pin and a few other essentials, and it is poor judgment 
to encourage her to make shift without them. 

With regard to the practical nature of the instruction 
given, it should be borne in mind that the best results 
can be obtained by a little flexibility. The learners will 
usually be either girls or young women, and while the 
most important thing is for them to learn to prepare 
simple, nutritive dishes, they will infallibly demand 



INDUSTRIAL AND EDUCATIONAL 301 

instruction in making cakes, candy and ices. Teaching 
how to make these latter may be quite as practical as 
teaching how to boil potatoes. Knowledge of how to 
prepare such dishes may lead to the substitution of 
healthful and well made deserts for the cheap pastry of 
the corner baker, and the dubious preparations of the 
street vendor of ice-cream. Moreover, by the judicious 
admixture of such alluring features the learners may 
be led to bear patiently reiterated instruction in the 
plainer and more substantial dishes. 

Most established cooking schools have graduated 
courses of instruction, explaining, as each method of 
cooking is taken up, the principles on which it is based, 
and leading gradually from the preparation of the 
simplest possible dishes to the higher forms of cookery. 
It is not difficult to secure these outlines, and though 
the volunteer worker will frequently find it necessary 
to modify them to suit the limited time or needs of her 
pupils, she will find them helpful and suggestive. The 
effort should be to give the learners some knowledge 
of the food values of different articles, and of the close 
relation between nutriment and health, some familiarity 
with the general principles of cooking, and a thorough 
drill in preparing some of the more common articles of 
food. This object cannot be attained all at once, or 
without serious effort on the part of the instructor, but 
the end is worth working for. 

A variation on the ordinary cooking class is the course 
in cooking for invalids offered by some organizations, 
usually in connection with a course of training in simple 
nursing. This is of distinct value, apart from the course 
in nursing, but it does not make such a wide appeal as 



302 



HOW TO HELP 



the plain cooking, and is more in the nature of technical 
training. 

Sewing classes are perhaps more generally used than 
classes in cooking, partly because it is easier to obtain 
instructors for them, partly because a suitable place and 
equipment can be more easily provided, and partly 
because there is usually a more enthusiastic response to 
any attempt to start them. They differ widely from 
place to place, ranging from the elaborate course in 
dressmaking, taught by an experienced dressmaker, and 
intended to turn out pupils capable of earning a living 
by their trade, to the instruction in patchwork and "over 
and over" given to little groups of little girls. In girls' 
clubs sewing often takes the place of some more active 
form of manual training among boys. When the mem- 
bers of the class are young, generally instruction will 
be given in the more elementary kinds of sewing, and 
the pupils may be passed from class to class, until they 
become accomplished needlewomen. When the learners 
are older, they are usually impatient of such detailed 
instruction, and demand practice and assistance in mak- 
ing some particular article. Classes in millinery are apt 
to be very popular in the spring and fall, when the 
learners are anxious to provide themselves with new 
hats, but unattractive in midsummer or winter. Classes 
in shirtwaist making hold their own at any time, and 
instruction in dressmaking, as a whole, has a fairly 
steady support. 

None of these classes, however, are likely to develop 
much feeling of solidarity, or to form the basis for an 
enduring relation. The learner comes to them for in- 
struction in a particular matter, and when she has got 
that, the class has served its purpose and she drops out. 



INDUSTRIAL AND EDUCATIONAL 



303 



For this reason it is more satisfactory to carry on such 
classes in connection with a well established organiza- 
tion, in which there is already a fairly developed club 
sentiment, than to conduct them as detached experi- 
ments. 

Educational classes hardly need comment. Usually 
they are conducted either among young people who 
wish to fit themselves for better paid or more interesting 
work than their education as children prepared them 
for, or among foreigners who wish to acquire our lan- 
guage. Sometimes classes begun with these modest 
purposes have developed into elaborate courses, carry- 
ing the student through a well planned program and 
providing cultural as well as utilitarian training. This, 
however, is unusual, and is probably hardly to be 
achieved except in a large city and under peculiarly 
favorable conditions. Generally the instruction given 
will be in some of the simpler branches, or in some study 
with a distinct commercial value, such as shorthand, 
bookkeeping or mechanical drawing. Since much more 
satisfactory work can be done with small groups of 
scholars, there is generally a demand for all the volun- 
teer teachers obtainable, and the beginner will find little 
difficulty in securing an opening. 

The most important qualification for such work is 
faithfulness to an engagement. In most cases the 
students come to the class after a full day's work, and 
for a teacher to miss a class appointment except for the 
gravest reason, shows as great a lack of consideration 
as of reliability. In addition, the work demands con- 
siderable tact and adaptability, since many of the stu- 
dents are both physically tired, and unaccustomed to 
sustained mental effort, so that careful handling is 



304 HOW TO HELP 

required to keep their interest alive. In general, how- 
ever, it is much like any other kind of teaching, requires 
the same qualifications and is carried on in the same 
manner. 



CHAPTER XXV 

CLUB WORK AMONG ADULTS 

"The adult," says someone, "is the unit of alleviative 
work, while the child is the unit of preventive work." 
It is for this reason that work among children is usually 
the earliest field of effort entered by any social agency, 
and that clubs and classes among children are many-fold 
more numerous than among adults. This is natural and 
right; the hope of the future lies with the children, and 
where effort must be limited it is infinitely wiser to 
spend it among them than in an attempt at bettering 
conditions among those whose lot is already deter- 
mined. 

And yet work among adults has its preventive side, 
too. Whatever tends to make the parents of a family 
more temperate, more interested in their own home and 
in life in general, whatever enlarges their outlook and 
adds knowledge to their affection, tends directly to make 
the home a better place for bringing up children, and to 
enlist parental influence on the side of their right devel- 
opment. Sometimes this effect is very evident, as was 
shown in a mothers' club recently, where a group was 
found listening intently to a member's account of how 
she had tried to impress upon her foreign neighbor that 
it wasn't wise to give samples of everything the family 
ate to a child less than a year old. "I told her all about 
how delicate a little baby's stomach is, and how pickles 
and such things would make it sick, and how it wouldn't 
ever have any digestion if she did like that, but it wasn't 
20 305 



3 o6 HOW TO HELP 

no use. 'Good food, good food/ was all she'd say. 
Them dagoes is ignorant people, anyhow." 

"That's so," chimed in another. "There's one lives 
on my floor and I don't believe one of her children has 
a stitch of underclothing. The poor little things sit 
around on the floor, and the cold air coming in from 
the crack under the door, and nothing in the world on 
but little calico dresses. They've always got colds." 

And then developed an informal discussion of the 
many various ways in which the children of the neigh- 
borhood were wrongly fed and clothed — a discussion 
which delighted the heart of the club leader, because she 
knew that a few years before, at the time the club was 
formed, there was hardly a woman in it who wouldn't 
have indulged in some or all of the practices they were 
criticising so sharply today. 

While clubs among women often do some of their 
best work along the lines of instruction in home-mak- 
ing, very naturally clubs among men work in entirely 
different directions. Generally a club of men is formed 
primarily for the satisfaction of the social instinct, and 
whatever features may be added one of its most im- 
portant preventive functions is that of offering a counter 
attraction to the saloon. 

Few persons who are not directly interested in phil- 
anthropic work realize how little opportunity the day 
laborer has for recreation except in drinking places. 
According to the strenuous standard which many con- 
sider obligatory upon the poor, a workingman's home 
should be the center of all his interests, and he should 
not desire any recreation outside of it, except, perhaps, 
an occasional Sunday School picnic to which he can take 
his wife and all the babies. The chief trouble with this 



CLUB WORK AMONG ADULTS 307 

theory is that it has no connection with the actual facts 
of the case. When a man who has been working hard 
all day long, often under trying conditions of heat or 
cold or malodorous surroundings, comes home to a 
crowded tenement with a tired wife and half a dozen 
children, each in the way of all the rest, it is hardly 
worth while to point out to him the pleasures of an eve- 
ning in the bosom of his family. It does not materially 
affect the situation that his wife needs a change as much 
as he, and that it would be a kindness for him to take 
care of the children and give her a chance to rest. 
Generally speaking, he will not do it. He needs recrea- 
tion, and in the majority of cases he will go where he 
can get it. Far too often the only places open to him 
are the saloon and the cheap theater. 

Of these, the saloon is the more likely to receive his 
patronage, not necessarily from any desire on his part 
for liquor, but because it offers the most for his money. 
There he can find warmth and light and abundant com- 
panionship. If he wants to talk with acquaintances, to 
play a game of cards, to read his paper quietly, or simply 
to sit in comfort and look on, it is all his for the price of 
a glass or two of beer. There is no other place where 
he can get so much for so little. The Young Men's 
Christian Associations are meant for a somewhat dif- 
ferent class of men. The trades unions and mutual 
benefit associations meet only at intervals, and do not as 
a general rule maintain a hall for use as a club room 
outside of the times of meeting. The public libraries are 
often too far away to be reached, and while, if near 
enough for practical use, they furnish a comfortable 
place in which to read, they do not permit smoking and 
usually make no provision for satisfaction of the social 



308 HOW TO HELP 

instinct. Church and mission reading rooms are apt to 
be hedged about with restrictions, and barred of! far 
more effectually by the working man's conviction that 
they are charity affairs, and that if he enters them he 
does not go as a self-respecting man, managing his own 
affairs and paying for what he gets, but as an object of 
philanthropic effort who has bartered away a portion of 
his independence, and must, as part of his bargain, sub- 
mit to patronage and condescension from the managers. 
Of course this feeling is often most unjust to the pro- 
moters of such places, but it exists and must be taken 
into account. 

It is a curious thing that while this need of social 
recreation has been strongly felt by the working people, 
they have made very little effort to meet the want 
through their own initiative. "The most careful search 
has failed to reveal in any of our American cities native 
clubs among the older men of which the primary idea is 
recreation and fellowship. . . . Social clubs among 
wage-earners are a positive necessity, especially in our 
intense American life. They serve as a center in which 
the pent-up social energy can find normal expression. 
Their absence means that this energy will find expres- 
sion in other ways." 1 

It is only within a comparatively few years past that 
this need has been recognized, and that efforts have 
been made to meet it. In a few places clubs have been 
instituted among the working people which are meant to 
be self-supporting. The cost of maintaining club rooms 
which shall be always open, of providing for the neces- 
sary service and equipment, and of meeting running 
expenses is so large that there is great difficulty in sus- 

1 Substitutes for the Saloon, p. 80. 



CLUB WORK AMONG ADULTS 309 

taining such clubs, and their field is necessarily limited. 
More often some person or organization supplies a part 
of the cost, giving the building and equipment, for 
instance, and providing a part of the current expenses. 
Usually under these circumstances a membership fee is 
charged, sufficiently large to keep the members from 
feeling that they are sacrificing their independence. 
They know that these fees do not cover the cost of main- 
taining the club, but feel about it much as does the col- 
lege student who knows that his tuition does not nearly 
equal the cost of the college course, but does not dream 
of considering himself an object of charity on that 
account. 

The best known example of this kind of club is the 
Hollywood Inn, at Yonkers, New York. In this case a 
building worth $150,000 was given by the originator of 
the interprise, a Mr. Cochran, and yearly contributions 
of considerable amounts have been found necessary in 
addition to the annual membership fee of three dollars. 
The house is fitted up with reading, game, smoking and 
music rooms, class rooms, a public hall, a library, lava- 
tories, billiard rooms, etc., and one floor is reserved for 
boys under eighteen, who have their own clubs there. 
The Inn has been an undoubted success from the begin- 
ning, but the cost is too great to permit it to be generally 
copied. 

Numerous organizations, however, have tried to pro- 
vide in more modest fashion for the wants of men. 
Such an effort need not demand much initial expense. 
A couple of rooms, — one for reading and smoking, one 
for games, — in a crowded part of town, a supply of 
books, papers and games, and a tactful, cordial mana- 
ger, who will be able to prevent possible excesses with- 



310 HOW TO HELP 

out interfering unduly with the independence of the 
club members, are the essentials. If such a place is 
opened, there is little difficulty in gathering the men for 
a beginning and forming a rather loose union. From 
this minor groups are apt to be organized, the men 
dividing up according to their special tastes, as for 
music or natural history or economic discussion. The 
greatest danger for such a club lies in too much super- 
vision, and the volunteer worker can often render best 
service by helping to collect the sum needed above the 
membership fees for maintenance, by aiding, when pos- 
sible, to work out plans suggested by the men them- 
selves, and by keeping hands off pretty severely. 

Another form of clubs for men is found in connection 
with some settlements, in which a graded series of asso- 
ciations exists, running from early childhood through 
adult life. Here a club member passes naturally from 
one to another, his companions going with him. Lincoln 
House, in Boston, has worked out this system more 
completely perhaps than has been done elsewhere. A 
resident of the House briefly outlines the plan as follows : 

"The plan may be tried within a settlement or apart 
from a settlement. Apart from a settlement a name for 
such a social institution as I have in mind would appro- 
priately be 'Social Union,' for the plan means a union of 
social clubs. First there is a large kindergarten, then a 
children's club, a girls' club, a boys' club, a young 
women's and young men's club, a women's and a men's 
club. The tots go from the kindergarten at six to the 
children's club ; at ten the girls and boys go to the boys' 
and the girls' clubs; at sixteen to the young women's 
and the young men's clubs; at twenty the young men 
become members of the men's club ; at marriage the girls 



CLUB WORK AMONG ADULTS 311 

go to the women's club. Thus there is an ascending 
scale of clubs, representing the whole family." 1 

The peculiar benefit of this plan lies not only in the 
fact that it maintains the hold once established over the 
individual, but also in that it provides a common interest 
for the whole family, parents and children alike. The 
objection is sometimes brought against clubs that they 
take their members away from home and tend to weaken 
the family tie. This objection is not wholly valid, since 
the club more often takes its members from the street or 
saloon than from the home, but it must be admitted that 
such organizations frequently pay scant attention to the 
family as a whole. The Lincoln House plan does away 
with this difficulty. By giving each member of the 
family a club interest it supplies them with a common 
experience, increases their respect for the clubs and for 
each other, and strengthens the family bond by a com- 
munity of sentiment and interest. 

Where this plan is not in operation it is very desirable 
that clubs should be established among adult women. 
Their need of social recreation is as great as in the case 
of the men, while their opportunities for gratifying it 
are still smaller. They do not have even the little 
variety made by going out to their work in the morning 
and coming back at night. Shut in to a monotonous 
round of housework, without resources in themselves, 
and with none of the knowledge of what their work 
means and of how to do it which might make it a delight 
instead of drudgery, it is no wonder if they grow dull 
and narrow, or if they devote themselves to gossip, too 
often malicious, or waste their time in endless discussion 

1 T. S. Alexander, Address before Newport Chanty Organ- 
ization Society, Jan., 1900. 



312 HOW TO HELP 

with their neighbors of the most trivial details of their 
common life. They do not often take to the saloon, but 
the pail of beer sometimes plays a part in these informal 
coteries. That it does not more often do so is strong 
testimony to the inherent strength of character of the 
working woman. For them a woman's club may mean 
the coming of a new interest which transfigures the 
whole of life. 

Clubs for women of this kind need much closer over- 
sight and direction than those for men. The women are 
not used to speaking in public except on occasions when 
they all speak at once. They have little initiative, shrink 
from responsibility in the club management, and have 
almost no idea of amusing themselves. When, after 
some years of club life these disadvantages have been 
overcome, it has been found that they still need guid- 
ance, and that when the club management is left entirely 
to their hands factions arise, the officers take sides and 
use their positions for partizan purposes, and such 
troubles develop that the women themselves ask for the 
resumption of the earlier supervision. This, of course, 
would not apply to those who have graduated from chil- 
dren's and girl's clubs into organizations for women, or 
to those who in trade unions and similar bodies have 
been trained in united action for a common end ; it applies 
only to those who are wholly untrained in organized 
action, and whose first step outside of the narrow round 
of their own household is taken when they enter the 
woman's club. 

This difference between men's and women's clubs 
means that the latter offer more opportunities for active 
work on the part of the philanthropic outsider. Pat- 
ronage and condescension are equally out of place, but 



CLUB WORK AMONG ADULTS 313 

the women's clubs usually need more help in amusing 
and keeping interested their members. Ordinarily such 
clubs take up some definite program, cooking or sewing 
or home-making, or the care of children, or discussion 
of current topics. The scope of the work varies widely 
according to the capacity of the members. Informal 
talks on every day matters are usually appreciated, and 
the more concrete the subject the better the talk is 
liked. 

"The topic of our first formal discussion, informally 
treated, of course," says Mrs. Betts, in describing one 
such club formed in New York, "was 'How long after 
the hair is out of curl papers is it becoming?' and this 
led to a general talk about the wife's keeping herself 
tidy and pretty." It is interesting in this connection to 
notice that when Mrs. Booker Washington began club 
work among the negro women one of their first talks 
was on the topic: "What is the effect on the features 
of wrapping the hair with strings?" Both talks were 
very successful. 

In general it will be found that any discussion of per- 
sonal appearance, of the simpler rules of hygienic liv- 
ing, of the illnesses of children, with rules for their 
prevention or for their treatment if they have developed, 
of how to make the most of what they have and how to 
increase the attractiveness of their homes, interests the 
women and may lead on naturally to a consideration of 
the most serious responsibilities of the wife and mother. 
Talks on municipal housekeeping and the topics of the 
day follow in natural sequence, and the club becomes 
the medium through which the woman comes to take 
some interest in the outside world, and to perceive the 
relation of the family to the community. 



3H 



HOW TO HELP 



Naturally the volunteer who wishes to take part in 
such club work must have clearly in mind what she 
wishes to share with the women, and must have studied 
the art of presenting facts in an interesting fashion. 
Moreover, she needs to be very sure that she knows 
something of the home conditions of her audience, else 
her remarks may be worse than valueless. 

"She meant well," said the club director, "but she 
puzzled the women. She was talking about the urgent 
need of privacy. 'Every child,' she said emphatically, 
'ought to have a room to itself, but if you aren't able to 
give it that you certainly can see that it has a separate 
bed shut off by screens from the others. They sell very 
nice little cots so cheap now that I'm sure every one of 
you could manage it by a little planning.' The women 
listened dazedly. It was not only the price of the cots, 
though that would have been an impossibility for most 
of them; the question of space was still more serious. 
Most of them lived in tenements with two bedrooms, 
each just large enough to hold one bed touching the 
wall at the head and the foot. Most of them, too, had 
at least three, many of them five or more children. 
'She's an awful nice lady,' said one of them afterwards, 
but I guess she must live in a hospital. Where'd I put 
five beds with screens 'round them? I never slept in a 
bed to myself in my life, and mostly we think we're 
pretty lucky when we don't have more than three in a 
bed.' " 

But to speakers who understand the conditions under 
which their audience live, and who have something 
practical to say, the women show themselves remark- 
ably responsive. What is learned at the club is taken 
home and put into practice for the benefit of husband 



CLUB WORK AMONG ADULTS 315 

and children, often with far-reaching results. The club 
furnishes at once a stimulus and a standard for its mem- 
bers; it broadens their sympathies and quickens their 
interests, and apart from its immediate and practical 
results, it often exercises a vivifying influence upon the 
whole family life. 

To summarize : clubs for adults are more difficult to 
start and to maintain than are clubs for children, but 
are greatly needed by men and women alike. For men, 
the main requisites are to provide suitable meeting 
places with opportunities for amusement, and then to 
leave them to work out their own salvation, with few 
restrictions of any kind; for women there is need of 
much more oversight and assistance. The club for men 
serves its greatest utility in providing a counter attraction 
to the saloon ; the club for women in providing an escape 
from the narrowing conditions which too often charac- 
terize their home life. More effort must be made to 
amuse the women, and in doing this much really edu- 
cative work may be carried on. For both men's and 
women's clubs there is a wide field, and their opportuni- 
ties of usefulness are so abundant that the worker may 
well feel compensated for the effort needed to overcome 
the difficulties in the way of establishing and success- 
fully maintaining them. 



CHAPTER XXVI 

SOCIAL SETTLEMENTS 

"In whatever country of the world, in whatever social con- 
dition thou art placed, it is with the oppressed thou must live, 
for one-half of ideas and feelings are lacking in those who live 
only with the great and happy." 

The settlement movement is one of the most striking 
features of recent times. Its growth has been phenom- 
enal. Beginning in this country in 1887, when Dr. 
Stanton Coit founded the Neighborhood Guild in New 
York, it has grown until in less than twenty years we 
have considerably over a hundred settlements. It has 
been adopted by religious people and free-thinkers, by 
Hebrews, Roman Catholics and Protestants alike, as the 
most effective form for giving expression to their sense 
of human brotherhood. While not in its original con- 
ception a charitable movement, it has done much to 
improve the charities of every city where it has been 
tried. It has provided unique opportunities for socio- 
logical study ; it has lent valuable aid to every forward 
municipal movement; and it has given a chance which 
cannot elsewhere be secured for rich and poor to become 
acquainted with one another, to learn why each looks at 
the world as he does, and from this fuller knowledge to 
gain fuller sympathy and understanding. 

The movement has taken on so many forms and the 
term settlement has been used so loosely that it is diffi- 
cult to find a definition which will cover all its manifes- 
tations. Beneath all the variations, however, a few 
essential features may be found. Primarily a settlement 

316 



SOCIAL SETTLEMENTS 



317 



consists of a group of cultivated people, men or women 
or both, living by choice in a poor neighborhood, sharing 
the outward conditions of the life around them, striving 
to become friends with their neighbors, to share with 
them their greater opportunities, and to learn from them 
in turn the lessons their different environment has 
taught. The fundamental idea is friendly participation 
in the life of the community, sharing its difficulties and 
sharing also the means which either settlement resident 
or local resident possesses of righting these, or of rising 
above them, if they are inevitable. When once this idea 
was formulated its possibilities were recognized, and it 
has been adapted to a variety of purposes, but the causes 
which led to the rise of the movement and to its rapid 
development must be sought in the social conditions of 
the last century. 

Throughout the greater part of that period there was 
observable a growing dissatisfaction with the social sit- 
uation, and an increasing conviction that no man's duty 
to his fellows could be accomplished by the exercise of 
charity alone. Charity relieved conditions, but left 
causes untouched. Moreover, it could reach only the 
more material forms of destitution. There were hosts of 
working people in every large city who never lacked 
food, but whose lives were barren and starved. Their 
surroundings were unhealthful and unlovely. Their 
opportunities for education were small, and for social 
relaxation smaller still. Travel, art, literature, healthful 
recreation — all these were unknown lands to them. 

The well-to-do saw them vaguely and cursorily at 
times when business or pleasure took them through the 
poorer districts, or when they were engaged in charitable 
work among those fallen from the independence held 



318 HOW TO HELP 

very dear among them. Sometimes a book written by 
one who had worked in such fields startled the comfort- 
able by its revelations ; sometimes an agitator made him- 
self heard outside of his own narrow circle, painting 
lurid pictures of what life was for his fellows, and 
threatening wild things to come. But no one seemed to 
know exactly how the well-to-do might cross the chasm 
separating them from the poorer classes, how they might 
learn what were the conditions really prevailing among 
the latter, and how, if these were not what they should 
be, the situation might be improved. 

Apart from this feeling of an unfulfilled duty toward 
one's less fortunate fellows, there was developing a 
strong conviction that life ought to mean something 
wider than existence within one class v , however culti- 
vated that class might be. To live only among those 
whose lives are the same in antecedents and surround- 
ings as one's own, to make friends only with those who 
can return the same coin of friendship one gives them, 
never to get away from one's own point of view, nor to 
see life from the standpoint of those to whom it has 
meant an absolutely different, often an almost antago- 
nistic existence — all this seemed narrow and petty. Life, 
it was felt, ought to be broad and comprehensive. One's 
poorer neighbors might lack many things one had, but 
they possessed other experiences, perhaps as well worth 
understanding. A desire for self-culture, if no other 
motive came into play, ought to involve some experience 
among different classes. 

Moreover, there was a growing feeling of the social 
implications of noblesse oblige. One could not live one's 
life rightly by fulfilling the requirements of personal 
honesty and uprightness, by discharging one's duty to 



SOCIAL SETTLEMENTS 319 

one's family and neighbors solely in that sphere of life 
in which one happened to have been born or placed. 
"The time may come," said one of the promoters of the 
movement, "when the politician who sells one by one 
to the highest bidder all the offices in his grasp will not 
be considered more base in his code of morals, more 
hardened in his practice, than the woman who constantly 
invites to her receptions those alone who bring her an 
equal social return, who shares her beautiful social sur- 
roundings only with those who minister to a liking she 
has for successful social events. In doing this is she not 
just as unmindful of the common weal, as unscrupulous 
in her use of power, as in any city 'boss' who consults 
only the interests of the ring?" 

These seem to have been the leading motives under- 
lying the settlement movement — a growing sense of 
brotherhood, which, carrying with it increased respon- 
sibilities, demanded fuller knowledge that these might 
be honestly met; a desire for a wider and fuller life, a 
life which should not be confined within the limits of one 
social class ; and the growing perception of the need for 
a social as well as for a personal righteousness, a need 
which could only be satisfied by bearing one's share of 
the community burdens, and doing one's part in the 
struggle to lighten these. 

To satisfy these desires the originators of the settle- 
ment movement decided to live among the working 
people, as nearly as possible under the same conditions 
as they. By sharing the material conditions of their 
lives, they could gain that knowledge of what these were 
which must precede any effective effort to improve them. 
By making friends, simply and naturally, with their 
working class neighbors, they would satisfy their aspira- 



320 



HOW TO HELP 



tions for a part in the fuller life of humanity. By shar- 
ing with them their greater opportunities and privileges, 
they would satisfy to some extent the imperious demand 
of the growing social conscience, and discharge the 
duties of which the increasing sense of the brotherhood 
of the race had made them aware. So they went to live 
among the working people in the poorer quarters of our 
large cities. 

It was obvious that merely living in a tenement in a 
poor neighborhood would accomplish very little good for 
anybody; to carry out their plans the residents must 
make friends with those around them, and must devise 
means for sharing with them what they most enjoyed in 
the life closed to their neighbors. So it inevitably came 
about that a settlement should be the center of a varied 
social activity. 

As it is easier to make friends with children than with 
older people, settlements in the United States have 
rather generally begun by forming children's clubs, 
opening day nurseries or kindergartens, and generally 
working among the little people. To these activities are 
usually added in swift succession, clubs for boys and 
girls, clubs for young men and women, debating and 
reading clubs, classes for various kinds of mental and 
manual training, libraries, stamps savings agencies, 
dancing and music classes, loan exhibitions of pictures, 
travel clubs, and so on, through a long list of neighbor- 
hood activities. In every possible way the settlement 
strives to be of use to its neighbors, to bring to them the 
opportunities they miss elsewhere, to share with them 
whatever of culture and aspiration the residents possess, 
to fit them to meet more successfully the material con- 
ditions of their lives, and to open to them the higher 



SOCIAL SETTLEMENTS 321 

avenues of enjoyment from which their environment 
might easily debar them. 

Besides this immediate and personal helpfulness, the 
settlement strives to benefit its . neighborhood through 
public and municipal action. 'The curse of the poor is 
their poverty," and too often the worst abuses of 
municipal misgovernment are found in the crowded 
quarters where they are most harmful. If the streets 
are left uncleaned in the wealthier portions of a city, 
the residents know how to make such effective protest 
that the matter is set right ; in the poorer quarters, where 
rubbish accumulates far more quickly, where the chil- 
dren pass most of their free time on the streets, and 
where neglect is most immediately harmful, a dishonest 
contractor may scamp his job by the month and no one 
knows how to bring him to account. Living under the 
same conditions as the poor, the settlement residents 
come to know by personal and first-hand knowledge the 
abuses to which they are subjected, while their former 
training teaches them how to set about righting matters. 
Moreover, by their situation in the midst of the victims 
of wrong conditions, the residents have exceptional op- 
portunities for striking at the root of the trouble, the 
ignorance of their neighbors. As Professor Henderson 
puts it: 

"The residents, just because they live on the ground 
and suffer directly from vicious conditions, become 
interested in the lot of the neighbors. You cannot photo- 
graph a smell or transmit a headache by telephone, but if 
you live in a poor district you need no rumors and no 
witnesses to convince you. The huge volumes of black 
smoke roll from tall chimneys into the windows of the 
Settlement and cover books and curtains with soot, and 
21 



$22 HOW TO HELP 

begrime faces, necks and hands. Nausea and fever warn 
them of the causes of sickness and death and give them 
the right of self-defense. 

"Therefore they naturally make common cause with 
their neighbors. They may begin by a personal appeal 
to the health officers or to the alderman. Occasionally 
this is fairly successful. But so long as the people 
have insanitary habits and customs the public authorities 
can accomplish little. Ignorance is the first enemy to 
fight. The people can get anything they want if they 
will unite and ask for it persistently. Back yards, 
drains, alleys, walks, street cars cannot be clean and 
wholesome without reformation of habits. Therefore 
with infinite tact and patience the residents must teach 
the principles of hygiene and sanitation." 1 

In regard to the moral evils of a locality the work 
of the settlement is no less valuable. Few can have for- 
gotten the effective help lent to the "red light" campaign 
in New York by the residents of the different settle- 
ments. Ordinarily the work against such conditions is 
less direct. The provision of proper places for young 
men and young women to meet, and of suitable recrea- 
tion under morally healthful surroundings does much to 
keep young people out of danger. The establishment of 
clubs and classes, providing an interest independent of 
the saloon, does much for the temperance cause. The 
teaching given in sanitation and personal hygiene, the 
instruction in cooking and home-making, the chances for 
gymnasium work and for fresh air outings, all tend to 
improve the physique and to render physical temptations 
less attractive, while opportunities are given for becom- 
ing absorbed in higher interests which crowd out the 

1 Social Settlements, p. 130. 



SOCIAL SETTLEMENTS 323 

lower amusements leading into danger. The whole 
influence of a settlement is cast on the side of temper- 
ance and morality. 

Settlements may or may not do directly religious 
work, according to the purpose of those establishing 
them. Usually they find it inevitable that they should 
participate to some extent in philanthropic work. Fre- 
quently they are regarded as being themselves philan- 
thropic institutions, a view against which many of their 
originators protest. "Working people," says Miss 
Addams, "live in the same streets with those requiring 
charity, but they themselves, so long as they have health 
and good wages, require and want none of it. As one of 
their number has said, they require only that their aspi- 
rations be recognized and stimulated, and the means 
of attaining them put at their disposal. Hull House 
makes a constant effort to secure these means for its 
neighbors, but to call that effort philanthropy is to use 
the word unfairly and to under-estimate the duties of 
good citizenship." 

Clubs and classes are common to practically all settle- 
ments, but there are many other lines of activity in 
which they exhibit wide divergencies. Some take an 
active part in the labor movement in their localities ; 
some make a special feature of industrial training; some 
strive especially to reach the foreign element, and to 
help the new comers to develop into good citizens as 
speedily as may be; there are settlements in which the 
educational idea is emphasized, and others composed of 
trained nurses, in which the major part of the work 
naturally lies among the sick; in fact, there is hardly a 
field of effort in which they cannot make themselves felt 
for good, and there is hardly a form of ability or knowl- 



324 HOW TO HELP 

edge to which they cannot offer an opportunity of 
usefulness. 

As its name implies, a settlement involves resident 
workers who shall settle in the selected locality. Usu- 
ally there is one, a person of experience and training, 
at the head of the settlement, with perhaps several paid 
workers on the staff. In addition, in the larger settle- 
ments, there will be residents who give their services 
free and meet their own expenses for the sake of doing 
such work. It is not possible, however, for these official 
members of a settlement to carry on all the work that 
an active organization wishes to undertake and must 
undertake if it is to fulfill its purpose. Wherever, there- 
fore, a settlement exists, there is a demand for volunteer 
workers. Clubs must be formed and supervised, chil- 
dren must be amused, neighbors must be entertained, 
libraries must be managed, savings must be collected, 
fresh air work must be carried on, flowers must be dis- 
tributed, neighborhood gatherings arranged, classes must 
be taught, gymnasium and manual training given, visits 
made among the neighbors, medical help secured for 
the sick or crippled or injured, — there are a thousand 
and one directions in which help is needed. The man 
or woman who wishes to give some time to social work 
but does not know how to find an opening, cannot do 
better than to visit the nearest settlement and offer his 
services. There is work for all who are willing to give 
their time faithfully and regularly, work which is at 
once interesting and useful, carried on with the stimulus 
of fellowship and organized effort, and under conditions 
which the individual working alone could not possibly 
secure. 

If a given locality possesses no settlement a would-be 



SOCIAL SETTLEMENTS 



325 



volunteer worker will find it well worth while to make 
a visit to some neighboring community where one is 
maintained, and to secure the yearly reports of the larger 
and older settlements. The record of their activities, 
which has only been hinted at here, cannot fail to be at 
once suggestive and inspiring. It is impossible without 
organized effort to undertake anything like the work of 
the settlement, but single workers may, from the ac- 
counts of what they are doing, learn to make their own 
efforts more effective and to pave the way 1 for the 
stronger work of such an association. 



PART IV.— General 

CHAPTER XXVII 

CONCERNING GIVING 

A great deal has been said and written about the 
danger of giving unwisely when one responds to an 
appeal for alms. Not so much has been said about the 
difficulty of giving wisely when applied to for a con- 
tribution to some society, cause or institution, yet the 
problem is no less perplexing. Few of us have any 
means of deciding on the merits of a cause presented to 
us. Persons whose means permit large subscriptions are 
usually sufficiently in touch with charitable movements 
to have some idea of the relative value of the various 
enterprises appealing for support, or can afford to have 
the matter looked up when a new society or institution 
presents its claims. But the majority of those who give 
small sums have little opportunity of discriminating. 
Applications are made to them, and they are anxious to 
give what they can toward any good cause, but they 
know nothing of the work they are asked to forward. 
They cannot take the time to investigate it themselves 
and do not know to whom to go for reliable information. 
Often there is no agency in their community which 
could furnish such information. So they give, hoping 
the enterprise is a good one, but thinking it better to 
err, if error is inevitable, on the side of liberality than to 
risk refusing aid to a movement deserving of support. 

There is no question that this benevolence is often 
326 



CONCERNING GIVING 327 

abused. Perhaps these undesirable solicitors might be 
roughly divided into two classes — those who simply- 
appropriate to their own uses all or most of the money 
they collect, and those who use it for the support of 
some society, institution, or form of charitable work 
which is either unnecessary, harmful in itself, or so badly 
managed that its effects are bad. 

Probably the members of the first class are met with 
more frequently than the second. In this division are 
found those technically known as "charity promoters," 
men and women who make good livings from the 
benevolence of the general public. Another body, de- 
pending for their gains on the good will of the religiously 
inclined, support themselves by carrying on so-called 
missions, in which the principal activity is the delivery 
of innumerable harangues by the founder. Another 
group, probably smaller, since the danger of detection 
and punishment is greater, collect for the avowed benefit 
of non-existent institutions or societies, trusting that 
they may make their harvest and get out of the neighbor- 
hood before the imposition is discovered. Others vary 
this procedure by collecting in the name of some local 
organization of which the merits are well known, but 
from which the solicitors have received no authoriza- 
tion, and to which they make no returns, simply pocket- 
ing the whole of their collections. Others collect money 
for the benefit of some individual, who may or may not 
exist, and who, if existent, will probably never see a 
penny of the money given, but of whose sufferings they 
tell a moving tale. In short, the fraudulent collector has 
nearly as many different devices as the fraudulent appli- 
cant for alms. 

Probably of all these different groups, the charity 



328 HOW TO HELP 

promoter is the one whom the average giver most fre- 
quently encounters. He — or quite as often she, for men 
and women alike resort to this device — first selects some 
popular charity of a given locality, by preference taking 
one which deals with children or invalids, since these 
classes make the strongest appeal to the kind-hearted, 
and then arranges with the managers of this charity to 
give an entertainment on its behalf. His proposition has 
a specious air of generosity. He has some concert or 
stereopticon exhibition or drill or something else which 
has proved a success elsewhere, and knowing the merits 
of this particular cause, he will be glad to help it along. 
He will bear all the expenses of advertising, selling the 
tickets, and giving the entertainment, and will guarantee 
to the charity the sum of one hundred dollars, or two, 
or more, according to the size of the place and the pros- 
pects for large returns. Sometimes he offers to give 
the entertainment and turn over to the charity all above 
a certain percentage of the net gains, but as this retained 
percentage is conspicuously large, the proposition is apt 
to rouse criticism, and he much prefers to arrange for a 
lump payment. 

If the offer is accepted, the promoter begins an active 
campaign of solicitation. Usually he has a corps of 
sellers of tickets for the entertainment, who visit house 
and store and office, urging all to buy for the sake of 
the charity with which the arrangement has been made. 
Nothing is said about the terms of the contract, and the 
buyer takes it for granted that what he pays goes to 
the charity. Frequently the promoter adds another line, 
selling advertising space on the program of the enter- 
tainment. Here, again, the advertiser innocently sup- 
poses that his money goes for the benefit of the society 



CONCERNING GIVING 



329 



or institution named, and pays for an advertisement he 
doesn't want, and which he knows will be of no benefit 
to him, simply to help along a good cause. 

The promoter publishes no account either of what he 
has taken in or of what his expenses have been. He 
hands over to the local charity the amount agreed upon 
and carries off the rest of his gains. It is not possible to 
say what these are, but there is no question that in the 
majority of cases the proportion which goes to the 
charity is very small, and that the share he keeps for 
himself is correspondingly large. He is usually able to 
pay extravagantly his corps of ticket sellers, who are 
frequently confederates, to live in lavish style, and to 
keep up his scale of expenditures for years, all on the 
money which the givers supposed was to go to benefit 
some charity. 

The defence of the community against the promoter 
must come primarily from charitable societies and insti- 
tutions. Obviously, if they refuse to lend their name, 
the promoter is blocked at the beginning of his plan. 
When, however, associations are found which are will- 
ing to play the role of decoy in this fashion, it is yet 
possible for the public, by the exercise of some care, to 
protect itself from the imposition. It is wise to refuse 
to buy tickets for such entertainments, or to advertise 
on their programs, unless one knows not only the society 
whose name is used, but the solicitor as well, or unless 
the latter, if unknown, carries a letter of endorsement 
from some responsible person, setting forth the terms of 
his contract with the association, and giving the tele- 
phone number of the endorser. Under these circum- 
stances it takes but a few minutes to verify the story 
told, and the person approached can then use his own 



330 HOW TO HELP 

judgment in regard to purchasing, feeling that whether 
he buys or refuses, he at least knows what he is doing. 

The members of the second group mentioned, the 
originators of so-called missions, depending for support 
on the skill of their founders in securing contributions, 
present a curious study, ranging as they do from 
deliberate impostors to honest but highly injudicious 
zealots. They do not ordinarily possess much ability, 
even the impostors working along rather simple and con- 
ventional lines. They are entirely incapable of such 
flights of fancy as Mark Twain's "King," who pretend- 
ing to be converted at a country camp meeting, told a 
blood curdling story of his former life as a pirate and 
collected a rich harvest of dollars to enable him to go 
back to the Indian Ocean and convert his fellow mis- 
creants. As a rule, they do not attempt anything more 
original than to claim that they are converted drunkards 
and that they have felt a divine call to preach the gos- 
pel, and they do not ordinarily gather in much more 
than is sufficient to keep them living in a hand to mouth 
fashion. 

On the other hand, their enterprises require almost no 
capital, and are susceptible of being repeated indefinitely. 
A man wishing to take up work of this kind may dis- 
pense with any plant altogether, simply beginning to 
preach on some square or street corner, though it is 
better for him to have a room on some street in the 
poorer quarters, with lights and a few chairs. A few 
hymn books and a musical instrument of some kind are 
desirable additions. There are in every city numbers of 
persons who have nothing to do and no place to go after 
the day's work is over, and who, lounging along the 
street, will inevitably be attracted by an open room in 



CONCERNING GIVING 331 

which services of any kind are going on. Curiosity and 
a desire for emotional excitement will attract others, and 
the mission worker promptly makes use of the fact that 
all these come to his mission as proving the needs for 
its ministrations, and the interest of the classes who are 
to be benefited. There are others, good and sincere 
persons, to whom a religious work is a religious work, 
regardless of details as to purpose, fitness of the worker, 
adaptation to the needs of the locality, or other deba- 
table features, who will be attracted, will begin to take 
part in the speaking, and who will in all honesty endorse 
the worker when he appeals for support. They will 
give what they can afford themselves, and will press 
friends and acquaintances into service. The amount 
thus received, however, is seldom enough for the needs 
of the worker, so he goes afield, urging, either by letter 
or in person, the claims of his mission upon the public 
generally, but more especially on those who have the 
reputation of being at once generous, able to give, and 
interested in religious work. When one locality has 
been exhausted, the mission drops out of existence, and 
another is opened under a different name in some other 
quarter, or in another city. 

The worker of this kind does not usually ask on the 
ground of his own necessities, but, evading the question 
of his support, or else claiming that friends are caring 
for him, appeals for subscriptions nominally to forward 
the work. As no account is ever given either of the 
amount received or of the way in which it is expended, 
there is a rather strong presumption that he uses what 
he gets for his own purposes. Occasionally, however, 
he frankly appeals for support, and charitable individuals 



332 HOW TO HELP 

and charitable societies alike are importuned to take care 
of him that he may devote himself to mission work. 

"For over four years," said one professional worker, 
"I don't believe there was one period of five months in 
which Mr. and Mrs. Benson didn't come up before our 
council under one name or another. At the time of our 
first experience with them they were strangers and 
applied to us for help. After that, they always tried to 
stave off reference to us, knowing that our attitude 
wasn't sympathetic. The man claimed to be an invalid, 
but we were never able to find that anything in par- 
ticular ailed him, beyond a serious disinclination to steady 
work. His wife was an able-bodied woman, but claimed 
that her time was entirely taken up in caring for her 
husband. A good deal of it, we knew, went into solicit- 
ing aid for the missions which she and her husband were 
always starting. 

"They would open a mission — both of them had a gift 
of fluent language, and Mr. Benson, while declaring 
himself too ill for work, always explained that the Lord 
strengthened him to declare the word — attract as many 
people as their room would hold, and usually have 
several professed conversions within the first few days. 
Then they would make a regular canvass of their neigh- 
borhood, or generally, Mrs. Benson would do the can- 
vassing, while Mr. Benson remained at home, ready to 
play the destitute invalid if anyone called. Usually it 
wouldn't be long until someone came to us to see if we 
couldn't get some help for this most interesting couple. 
The people who came weren't inclined to believe our 
story, and I didn't wonder at it. The air of meek resig- 
nation with which Mr. Benson would pray that my 
heart might be softened and that I might never suffer 



CONCERNING GIVING 333 

for my persecution of a poor invalid whose only desire 
was to be an instrument in the hand of the Lord, used 
to half shake my own belief in the rightfulness of my 
attitude. 

"The end was invariably the same. They would 
secure liberal support, and, according to their own state- 
ments, be on the eve of some grand undertaking, when 
their supporters would begin to grow uneasy. Rumors 
would begin to circulate about their way of living, and 
what they were doing with the money collected. They 
never had the self-control to live up to their professions 
long at a time. Reports of unseemly conduct would 
become more numerous and definite, their adherents 
would grow more and more dubious, and then, some 
evening, the mission would be found closed, the Bensons 
would have disappeared, and for a time no more would 
be heard of them. Then in a little while more we 
always began to hear of another mission in some other 
locality, carried on by a saintly invalid and doing a won- 
derful work, but sadly hampered for lack of funds, and 
a little investigation would show that our old friends 
had re-appeared under another name. I should very 
much like to know how much they collected, first and 
last, from our town, and whether, when at last they dis- 
appeared permanently, they began the same career else- 
where, or retired on their earnings." 

As a general rule, these exhorters, when not con- 
sciously impostors, are still unconsciously so. What 
they take for love of God and desire to serve humanity 
is frequently only a combination of emotional excita- 
bility, a love of being the center of a situation, and an 
unacknowledged fondness for escaping the drudgery of 
ordinary work and substituting for it the more interest- 



334 



HOW TO HELP 



ing career their fluency opens to them. There is very 
little reason for supposing that they do any real good, 
and much for thinking that money given them is wasted 
or even used harmfully. It is well to apply in their cases 
the plan suggested in regard to promoters,— to refuse to 
give unless they present credentials with the addresses 
of their endorsers so plainly given that these may be 
easily communicated with and the story of the solicitor 
verified. 

There is no danger of refusing help to a genuinely 
good cause by following this plan, since if a man has a 
real gift for evangelistic work it is not ordinarily diffi- 
cult for him to secure the support of some church or the 
backing of reliable persons. It may take him a little 
time to give such proof of his sincerity and ability as will 
be necessary to secure this endorsement, but this he 
should certainly be willing to give. Simply because a 
man has a certain fluency of language it is not reason- 
able for him to consider that he is divinely called to 
preach, without preparation or qualification of any kind ; 
nor is it more reasonable for him to expect the public to 
feel itself called upon to support him, upon his mere 
assertion that he is able to do a good work. If he is not 
sufficiently in earnest about his evangelistic work to be 
willing to prove himself, he had better give it up at once, 
and no one need feel hesitant about refusing him sup- 
port. 

This same rule of refusing to give until proper cre- 
dentials have been presented and verified would break 
up absolutely the business of the third group mentioned, 
the fraudulent collectors. Sometimes these collectors 
start out with no credentials at all, trusting entirely to 
their own ability to impress favorably those to whom 



CONCERNING GIVING 335 

they apply. Sometimes they carry with them fictitious 
letters, describing the work of an imaginary institution 
and requesting subscriptions for it in the name of some 
equally imaginary official, who, however, fails to give 
any address at which he may be reached. Sometimes 
the proceeding is varied by carrying around a subscrip- 
tion paper, asking contributions for the benefit of some- 
one whose distressed condition is set forth at length, the 
paper apparently having been signed by a number of 
well known people of the locality. Usually liberal 
amounts, supposed to have been contributed by these 
signers, are set down opposite their names, and many 
give on the strength of the cause having been apparently 
approved by these givers. 

In any or all of these cases, it is well to insist upon 
having the addresses of one or more of those whose 
names appear on the papers and to defer one's sub- 
scription until these can be communicated with, and 
some assurance of the merits of the cause can be secured. 
If the collector is seeking contributions in good faith, 
the cause for which they are required cannot be injured 
by the delay of a few hours, or even of a few days, 
necessitated by this method, while if he is a fraud this 
very limited investigation will bring the fact to light. 

So far we have considered only solicitors of the first 
general class, those who appropriate to their own use 
all or most of the money given them. A much more 
difficult problem confronts the giver when he is ap- 
proached by solicitors of the second general class, those 
seeking aid for charities already founded or in process 
of organization, in which there is no doubt that the 
funds will be used for the avowed purpose, but in which 
there may be serious question as to the value of the 



336 HOW TO HELP 

work done. In order to judge whether a given form of 
effort is desirable, one has first to know the whole phil- 
anthropic situation of the given locality, the character 
of the work proposed, the effect of such work in other 
places, and the ability and honesty of those undertaking 
it. The busy man or woman has no chance to obtain this 
information, and is apt to give or refuse rather blindly. 

In the larger cities several devices have been tried to 
remedy this state of affairs. In most places the Charity 
Organization Society stands ready to look into the work 
being done by any philanthropic body, and to report to 
anyone enquiring whether its work is needed and 
whether it is well conducted. A refusal to recommend 
a given society does not necessarily imply any dishonesty 
or even any serious defect in its management. Its work 
may simply be unnecessary, a duplication of that already 
being well done by some other body, or it may be work 
which while good under certain conditions, is rendered 
useless or even harmful by local conditions. In a com- 
munity, for instance, where the custom has prevailed of 
placing orphan or abandoned children in private fami- 
lies, and where the agencies engaged in this work are 
active and efficient, it would be in the highest degree 
undesirable to establish an orphanage of the conventional 
institution type. Often, however, recommendations are 
refused because of questionable or objectionable methods 
on the part of the managers. 

In 1900 an interesting attempt to meet this problem 
was undertaken in San Francisco, where a Charities 
Endorsement Committee was formed by the Merchants' 
Association and the Associated Charities. It was agreed 
that all charities wishing endorsement must agree to 
certain standards. The most important were: 



CONCERNING GIVING 337 

1. No charity endorsed by this Committee should lend 
its name to any charity promoter, or benefit by any 
entertainment given by such a promoter. 

2. No such charity should pay its solicitor a commis- 
sion greater than fifteen per cent. 

3. The endorsement card given to every authorized 
solicitor should state both the purpose for which he is 
collecting and the amount needed, and donors should 
enter, under their own signature, the amount con- 
tributed by each. 

Other rules were adopted referring to the manage- 
ment of the work carried on by the societies wishing 
endorsement. Thus relief societies must make pre- 
scribed investigations, and conform to certain rules 
regarding registration of cases. Child-placing societies 
must furnish full details in regard to children placed in 
homes, so that they may be visited and the excellence of 
the work be tested. Regulations suited to the nature of 
their operations have been adopted for other charities, 
and a formal endorsement is given only to those con- 
forming to all requirements. 

The result of the work of this Committee is said to be 
very satisfactory. Fraudulent solicitors and charity pro- 
moters have found their operations seriously hampered. 
Fewer appeals are made for money with the natural 
result that those made by authorized societies meet with 
a more liberal response. The pre-occupied man of busi- 
ness still has the option, if he chooses, of giving to 
unendorsed solicitors and running the risk of wasting 
his money, but if he wishes, he can protect himself 
against the swarm of miscellaneous applications, and 
make sure that what he gives goes to the purpose for 
which he intended it, and that it is administered in accord- 
22 



338 HOW TO HELP 

ance with certain accepted principles of wisdom and 
efficiency. 

Where no plan of this sort has been adopted, and 
where no Charity Organization Society exists, the giver 
has little chance of bestowing his gifts to the best advan- 
tage. It is simply impossible for men and women as 
ordinarily situated to investigate the applications which 
come to them, and to distribute subscriptions according 
to the value of each agency. Two precautions, however, 
may well be observed and will serve as some guarantee 
against one's gifts being wasted or misused. It is not 
wise to support agencies which make a boast of giving 
to all who apply, without question or investigation of 
any kind. And it is not wise to give to any agency 
which does not publish a full statement of its receipts 
and expenditures, audited by some professional auditor, 
or some one known to be responsible. 

In regard to the first precaution, it is now a pretty 
generally accepted principle that indiscriminate giving 
on the part of an individual is apt to cause far more 
misery than it relieves, and that money so given is not 
only wasted, but is actively employed in working harm. 
The mere banding together of several individuals and 
the widening of their field of work does not endow them 
with any supernatural wisdom, enabling them to dis- 
pense their gifts indiscriminately with any more prospect 
of good results than if they were working in their pri- 
vate capacities. In fact, as their work is likely to be 
more widely known, it is likely also to be more harmful. 

The most common forms of such indiscriminate giv- 
ing are perhaps the bread wagons, and similar methods 
of providing food, found in some of our large cities 
during the winter months. At some time during the 



CONCERNING GIVING 



339 



night, the time varying according to the judgment of 
those in charge, a wagon is sent to a certain spot, or a 
room is opened, and coffee and sandwiches, or bread and 
coffee, or some similar provision of food is dispensed to 
everyone who applies. For hours men can be seen 
standing in line, regardless of the weather, waiting for 
the distribution to begin, or for their turn to reach the 
wagon. Those in charge of the distribution lay much 
stress on the number of those applying, and claim, in 
effect, that this distribution is all that stands between 
hundreds and starvation. 

Some light was shed on this proposition by the experi- 
ences of Mr. Albert W. Van Ness, who, in the winter 
of 1905, dressed himself in old clothes and joined the 
bread lines on several nights. What he saw lends itself 
rather irresistibly to the conclusion that this form of 
relief tends directly to attract to the cities where it is 
practiced men who are abundantly able to support them- 
selves, and to maintain them there in indolence. It was a 
common matter for a man when he had been up to the 
wagon and received his coffee and sandwiches, to go 
back to the end of the line and come up again and again. 
When he began to be afraid that the dispenser of food 
would recognize him, he would hurry off to another 
bread line, and repeat the performance. As there is a 
limit to the number of sandwiches a man can eat at one 
time, the reason for this proceeding was not at first clear, 
but the men themselves explained that they were "stock- 
ing up" for the morrow. By slipping the sandwiches 
into their pockets they could easily get from these 
wagons a food supply for twenty-four hours. A little 
begging would enable them to secure tickets to some 
"Bethel" or "Shelter," where they could pass the night 



340 HOW TO HELP 

in what they considered sufficient comfort, or they might 
even find a free lodging. Why should they work? 
They could live easily through the winter, and when 
spring came they would "hit the road" again, and take 
up the tramping life which society was sedulously mak- 
ing easy for them. 1 

The reason for the second precaution is clear; it is 
the only guarantee the giver can have that his money 
goes for the purposes for which it is given. There is 
much carelessness in charitable bookkeeping, and even 
when there is no question that the funds are honestly 
administered, accounts are often published in such shape 
that it is impossible to decide how the money has gone. 
In less reliable organizations this looseness of accounts 
makes easy the way to extensive peculations which may 
be carried on for years without detection. A number of 
organizations which solicit public support do not publish 
accounts at all, while others merely publish a statement 
of so much received and so much spent. Others lump 
together such dis-similar items that it is impossible to 
form any idea of what proportion of the expenditure 
went in any given direction, while others accomplish the 
same end by a free use of "etc." 

Obviously, an income may be administered both wisely 
and honestly even though the published statement of 
receipts and expenditures may be highly unsatisfactory, 
but the giver has no means of knowing whether this is 
the case. No one who handles funds subscribed by 
others has any right to complain of being asked to keep 
such accounts of them that a professional accountant 
can see exactly how the money has gone. An itemized 
statement, approved by some reliable auditor, is the 

*A Night with the Bread Lines, Chanties, Vol. 13, P- 555- 



CONCERNING GIVING 



341 



giver's security. He expects a similar accounting from 
other agents to whom he entrusts his money, and there 
is no reason why he should make an exception in favor 
of philanthropic agencies. In fact, it cannot be said to 
be "in favor of." In view of the possibilities of dis- 
honesty in handling charitable funds, those engaged in 
the work ought, in self-defence, to insist upon rendering 
such accounts. It is the only way in which they can 
protect themselves against insinuations which it is an 
easy matter for an opponent to make, and it is not sur- 
prising that more and more the workers themselves are 
urging the necessity of publishing such statements. 

These suggested precautions may seem very inade- 
quate. They certainly do not go far toward solving the 
giver's problem. But that problem, like so many others 
of these latter days, is due to changing social conditions, 
and cannot be met by private means. In any locality in 
which the charities are not so organized that there is 
some responsible central board from which information 
may be secured, the giver cannot be sure that his money 
goes as he wishes and intends. He can only, by follow- 
ing the lines suggested above and others which may be 
adapted to local conditions, avoid some of the risks of 
its waste or misuse. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 



INDIRECT SERVICE 



In the preceding chapters an effort has been made to 
point out ways in which a volunteer worker might be 
immediately useful. In addition to the direct results 
secured, anyone taking up such work has an opportunity 
for indirect usefulness of no small degree in acquiring 
such information about a neighborhood as may lead to 
the improvement of its conditions. The friendly visitor 
or collector of stamps savings going week after week to 
a given district has, for example, an excellent chance to 
see how far the ordinary municipal regulations for the 
cleansing of the streets and the removal of garbage are 
obeyed, how well the laws concerning the sale of liquors 
and cigarettes to minors are enforced, what opportuni- 
ties for amusement the residents have, whether the 
tenements are fairly sanitary and well kept up, how 
rents range, whether the school attendance laws are well 
enforced, and so on, ad infinitum. 

If the visitor is acting for some strong and centralized 
society, this information may be of immediate use in 
enabling the organization to conduct a more vigorous 
campaign for improved tenements, execution of existing 
laws, passage and enforcement of better child labor 
laws, provision of opportunities for healthful recreation, 
and so on. If the visitor is acting independently, the 
information is still worth acquiring for possible future 
usefulness. Sooner or later the problems presented by 
all these matters will come up for solution, and their 

342 



INDIRECT SERVICE 



343 



right treatment must depend upon adequate information 
of what conditions really are. It is the tritest of 
truisms that no philanthropic work is of much value 
which merely alleviates existing troubles, leaving un- 
checked the conditions which produced them ; but the 
conditions can be attacked only through full and accurate 
knowledge of what they really are and how they make 
themselves felt. 

Generally when any campaign for improvement is 
planned, the first step is to secure a skilled investigator 
who, after looking thoroughly into local conditions, 
makes a report on their deficiencies. The work of a 
volunteer cannot take the place of this skilled investiga- 
tion, but it may form a valuable adjunct to the latter. 
The reports of volunteer visitors may decide, in the first 
place, in what direction improvement is most needed, 
and then, after the campaign is begun and the report of 
the investigator has been made, the additional knowledge 
of the non-professional observers may have great weight 
in swaying public opinion. There is sometimes a certain 
distrust of the conclusions of an expert brought in from 
outside, a feeling that if he is not putting forth a wholly 
unfounded opinion, he is at least strongly influenced by 
preconceived ideas. "Of course he found bad condi- 
tions ; that's what he's paid to do," is the summary ver- 
dict on such reports of certain opponents of reform. 
The conclusions of regular workers among the poor are 
not open to this criticism, and the consensus of their 
opinions must inevitably carry much weight. 

Not all workers will feel competent to undertake this 
kind of observation, and many will be disinclined to it. 
Fortunately, excellent work may be done apart from it. 
One may be an admirable friendly visitor or a penny 



344 HOW TO HELP 

provident collector or a home library or club worker 
without taking any part in neighborhood improvement 
work or sharing in any movement for better conditions 
of any kind. A good worker is not likely to take this 
attitude, for interest in the individual leads naturally to 
an interest in the conditions under which he must live 
and work, but still the two forms of effort are not neces- 
sarily inseparable. 

When a talent for observation and an ability to set 
forth clearly and effectively the results of observation 
are found united in one worker among the poor, there 
is almost no limit to the good which may be accom- 
plished. " The work which Jacob Riis has done in New 
York is a good illustration of this. It is not too much 
to say that he has accomplished more for the abolition 
of the slums, for the movement for improved housing 
conditions and for the creation of breathing spaces and 
playgrounds in the crowded quarters of the city than 
any other one man. Yet he has never been profession- 
ally a charitable worker; he has never neglected the 
day's work of his own profession. But as he went about 
his work he saw under what conditions the poor lived, 
and what he saw he reported, bringing it before the pub- 
lic in books, in magazine and newspaper articles, talking 
of the matter wherever opportunity offered, lending the 
results of his experience to those who approached the 
question from another standpoint, joining in all forward 
movements, until, although he had never ceased from his 
daily labors in another line, he had become "New York's 
most useful citizen." 

Whatever volunteer workers may feel about observa- 
tion of general conditions, there is one social movement 
to which they can hardly refuse to give the aid of their 



INDIRECT SERVICE 345 

knowledge of abuses without the risk of doing serious 
harm through their sins of omission, and that is the 
campaign against child labor. Something has already 
been said about the necessity for seeing that the indi- 
vidual child is not put to work too early or under 
unhealthful conditions, but the larger question of the 
employment of children in general, demands a few words. 
As a movement this is decidedly recent. For a long 
time no effort was made to protect children from too 
early or too prolonged work except by the trades unions, 
which have consistently opposed most forms of child 
labor. Within the last twenty years the situation has 
been materially changed, and the greater part of the 
improvement has come within the last eight or ten. It 
is not necessary to go into the causes which have led to 
this awakening; it is sufficient to notice that there is a 
concerted effort to obtain proper laws regulating the 
employment of children, that a National Committee on 
the subject has been formed, that all over the country 
observers are at work gathering facts and noting condi- 
tions, that a Federal Children's Bureau is strongly advo- 
cated, that yearly, in state after state, laws concerning 
the subject are presented, and that their presentation is 
repeated until they pass. 

The members of the National Committee recognize 
that it is neither possible nor desirable to impose one 
law, no matter how admirable, on all the states, regard- 
less of their preparation for it. Legislation which out- 
strips public sentiment is useless, and in states in which 
the subject has received little attention it is wise to make 
haste slowly, and to strive for small gains at first. The 
ideal toward which they are working involves both a 
positive and a negative side, a "thou shalt," as well as a 



346 HOW TO HELP 

"thou shalt not." On the negative side it is desired that 
no child shall be put to work until it is fourteen years 
old; that absolute proof of its age shall precede employ- 
ment; that it shall have at least the ability to read and 
write simple sentences in English, and that it shall have 
attended school regularly for the school term preceding 
its employment; that it shall have reached the normal 
physical development for its age; that its hours of work 
shall not be unduly long, and that it shall not, at least 
under sixteen, be permitted to work at night; and that 
the conditions under which it is employed shall be rea- 
sonably safe, sanitary and moral. On the positive side 
it is desired that every child shall be kept in school until 
it has attained a certain minimum of education and has 
the physical development of a healthy child of fourteen; 
and that its attendance at school shall be regular and 
punctual. This of course involves the provision of suf- 
ficient school facilities, and the employment of attend- 
ance officers to ensure the children's presence, and to 
prevent parents, either through ignorance or greed, from 
depriving the child of its rightful amount of education 
and freedom from too early employment. 

The visitor going regularly week after week to cer- 
tain of the poorer districts is pretty sure to see indica- 
tions of how well the laws are obeyed in these respects. 
The presence of young children at work in the tene- 
ments, or the repeated appearance of children of school 
age on the streets during school hours are sufficient 
evidences of the need for improvement, either in the 
laws or in their enforcement. The National Cos- 
sumers' League publishes annually a handbook of the 
child labor laws throughout the Union. This can be 
secured by writing to the headquarters of the League, 



INDIRECT SERVICE 



347 



105 East Twenty-Second Street, New York, and by 
obtaining this the visitor may easily make sure what is 
the law in any given state, and who are the officers 
charged with the duty of carrying it into effect. Once 
informed as to these points, it is an easy matter to call 
attention to a violation of the law, and to repeat the 
notice until the matter is set right, or until it becomes 
evident that there is need for further agitation to secure 
the passage and enforcement of effective laws. 

There are two reasons why visitors and charitable 
workers generally neglect this. Sometimes they think 
the situation of the family is so desperate that the chil- 
dren's labor is a necessity, and sometimes they think 
that the particular case is not important, that while the 
law is all very well in its way, the abuses of child labor 
have been much exaggerated, and it isn't necessary to 
take any trouble about the matter. The first objection 
has been touched on already. It cannot be repeated too 
emphatically or too often that no family ought to be 
dependent on the earnings of children under school age. 
If the destitution of the family is caused by the fault of 
the parents, it is an outrage that the children's only 
chance of rising to something better should be sacrificed 
to their indolence, intemperance or general worthless- 
ness. If the want is due to misfortune, there are others 
than the little children on whom the burden should fall. 
It is the duty of the community to care for those who 
are honestly unable to cope with their reverses, and the 
public which tries to shift this duty to the shoulders of 
the children will later on pay a heavy price in worn-out, 
wrecked and wasted lives. 

It would be too harsh to say that the apparent need 
for child labor arises from the wrong-doing of the 



348 HOW TO HELP 

parents, yet that is in many cases the real cause. Every 
charitable worker knows how often the child who tries 
to gain permission to go to work before the legal age, or 
who is kept out of school and slipped into some odd 
corner of the industrial world, is the child whose father 
has deserted, or is intemperate or persistently lazy. The 
casual visitor sees the misery of the family, but does 
not look far enough into causes to see where the fault 
lies. Wiser laws dealing with intemperance, a greater 
emphasis upon the responsibility resting on a man to 
provide for his own family, punishment of his failure to 
do so by some penalty not, as now, apparently designed 
for the express purpose of injuring the wife and chil- 
dren, and education of the public in the duty of aiding 
sufficiently those families who from one reason or 
another are in a state of destitution, — such measures 
would reduce the evils of child labor to a large extent. 

Another cause for child labor is found in the fact that 
in many forms of industry wages are too low. This side 
has already been discussed under the standard of living, 
but it must be mentioned here in justice to the many 
parents who would gladly give their children all pos- 
sible advantages, but who are driven to put them to work 
by the pinch of actual want. It may perhaps be said that 
men who can earn only six dollars a week or less in the 
best of times, and who are liable to periods of dull work 
or none at all, have no right to assume the responsibilities 
of a family. The question perhaps admits of debate, but 
the fact remains that these men usually do marry, and 
that the family income is insufficient for the family 
needs. What is to be done? The puzzled visitor can- 
not solve the question offhand; it is fortunate if a solu- 
tion can be found at all ; but one principle should be 



INDIRECT SERVICE 



349 



adhered to, that the children must be given a chance to 
rise to a better paying grade of work, and that this can 
be secured only by a strict enforcement of the child labor 
laws. 

Many of those who make no effort to see that the 
children in the families they visit are not put to work 
too early are honestly unaware of the importance of the 
subject. Of all classes the children are the least articu- 
late, and not until the harm has long been wrought does 
the general public wake up to what has been going on. 
For the most part we are comfortably convinced that 
abuses are not an accompaniment of latter day condi- 
tions, and that though, in Lord Shaftesbury's times, for 
instance, children were unquestionably put to labor too 
early and shockingly overworked, yet now there is little 
that really needs righting. This optimistic view is rather 
shaken by reading such bits as this, from the report of 
a doctor of the New York Infirmary for Women and 
Children, whose work calls her much among the tene- 
ments : 

"As soon as a little child can be of the least possible 
help it must add to the family income by taking a share 
in the family toil. A child three years old can straighten 
out tobacco leaves or stick the rims which form the 
stamens of artificial flowers through the petals. He can 
put the cover on paper boxes at four years old. He can 
do some of the pasting of paper boxes, though as a rule 
this requires a child of from six to eight years. But 
from four to six years he can sew on buttons and pull 
basting threads. A girl from eight to twelve can finish 
trousers as well as her mother. After she is twelve, if 
of good size, she can earn more money in a factory. The 
boys do practically the same work as the girls, except that 



350 HOW TO HELP 

they leave the home work earlier and enter street work, 
as peddlers, bootblacks and newsboys. . . . 

"A child from three to ten or twelve years adds by its 
labor from fifty cents to $1.50 per week to the family 
income. The hours of the child are as long as its 
strength endures or the work remains. A child three 
years old can work continuously from one and one-half 
to two hours at a time; a child ten years old can work 
twelve hours. Obviously under such conditions the child 
is deprived of the two greatest rights which the parents 
and the state are bound to give each child, health and 
education." 1 

It is not probable that conditions of this kind exist at 
all generally, but the only actual surety we can have 
against their development is the enforcement of a good 
school attendance law. Obviously if the child is in 
school, he cannot be at work. He may be put to work 
before and after school hours, but at least he has the 
reprieve of the school period. When this safeguard is 
removed, there is room for abuses of every kind to creep 
in. Where children are not subjected to the dull and 
deadening round of labor described by Dr. Daniels, they 
are yet often employed under conditions which make it 
almost impossible for them to grow up honest, indus- 
trious and capable of intelligent application to one thing 
for any prolonged period. The writer has found chil- 
dren of nine kept out of school to set up pins in a bowl- 
ing alley, or to make themselves generally useful at 
resorts of doubtful character. Physically these little fel- 
lows fare better than the children of their own age who 
are in other sections put to work in the mills or fac- 

*Dr. Annie S. Daniels, Report National Consumers* League 
for 1905, p. 28. 



INDIRECT SERVICE 



351 



tories, but what chance have they of developing into 
steady, reliable workmen? What likelihood is there that 
they will escape the contamination of their surround- 
ings? Why should they not become drunkards or 
gamblers? Some, in spite of every obstacle, become 
good citizens after all, but no wise parent would be 
willing to take the risk for his own child, and no one 
working in the name of charity has a right to let 
another's child be exposed to it. 

The movement for the proper protection of children 
is in its incipiency. It must make its way against igno- 
rance and indifference and greed and the tremendous 
power of vested interests. It can be carried on only 
through unceasing effort, through study and propaganda 
and the slow enlightening of public conscience and 
rousing of public interest. Few volunteer workers have 
the time and the means to take an active part in it; but 
each can help it forward by reporting to the proper 
authorities each case of a child under school age who is 
kept from school, and continuing to report it until either 
the child is in school, or it becomes apparent that there 
is urgent need for a change in the officials charged with 
enforcing the law. 



CHAPTER XXIX 

SOME PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS 

"I really wanted to do some work for people not so 
fortunate as I," observed a young woman, mournfully, 
''but I'm discouraged. I can't take a class or a club at a 
Settlement, because my time isn't at my own disposal, 
and I can't be regular in attendance. I haven't enough 
experience to take a family and visit it for the mis- 
sionary society. I've talked with people interested in 
such work, and it seems to me they say nothing but 
don't. It's: 'Don't give to anyone without full investi- 
gation.' 'Don't do anything which will lessen their self- 
reliance.' 'Don't teach them to depend on you.' Take 
care that in trying to help them you are not weakening 
their natural family ties.' 'Don't waken in them desires 
which you can't satisfy.' 'Don't do this and don't do 
that,' until it really seems as if all that is left for me is 
to hand over my money and humbly retire from any 
effort to apply it myself. I suppose it's something that 
they'll let me give my money — they're always willing to 
take that, I notice — but isn't there any way in which a 
person without much time, and that irregular, and with- 
out any experience, can really do something?" 

Probably there are many who would share her feeling. 
Numerous forms of work among the poor involve an 
amount of responsibility and of regular, sustained effort 
which makes them difficult, if not impossible, for many 
who would like to do something more than merely give. 
It may as well be recognized at the outset that most 

352 



SOME PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS 353 

philanthropic work does make rather heavy demands on 
the person undertaking it; it is not an amusement to be 
taken up or dropped according to one's varying whims. 
Nevertheless, there is a difference in the requirements 
of different kinds of work, and anyone really anxious to 
be of service can usually find some way open. Whenever 
possible the would-be-helper should seek the direction of 
some organized society or experienced worker, but 
when this cannot be done, it is still generally possible 
to find ways of making even irregular time effective. 
The following plans are merely suggestive of what may 
be done by those who cannot undertake much responsi- 
bility or give much time or money. 

Most cities and towns maintain an almshouse or some 
equivalent institution. Among the forlorn flotsam and 
jetsam collected here one is apt to find at least a few 
women who are not up to the normal standard of 
mentality. They are not imbeciles, they are only not 
quite bright, and for their own sakes, as well as for the 
sake of the community, they should be kept under cus- 
todial care for life. In the most advanced states, these 
women are cared for in institutions for the feeble- 
minded. In the backward states, they are allowed to go 
free, except when illness or maternity brings them to the 
state care. In many communities, however, they find 
their way to the almshouse and remain there from an 
early age. They are not unkindly treated. They are 
well fed, comfortably clothed, and given sufficient 
employment about the institution to keep them satis- 
factorily busy. But there the list of their advantages 
ends. Usually they have no connections who care to 
visit them or to whom they could go for a change and 
a little variety. They have no family ties, no natural 
23 



354 HOW TO HELP 

outlet for their affections, no break in the monotony of 
institution life. They are practically in prison; it is a 
kindly and beneficent imprisonment, but it presents a 
dreary outlook to a girl of twenty, say, who sees before 
her nothing but successive years of routine, unbroken 
by the ordinary changes of life, unbrightened by friend- 
ship or love. 

A little attention given by someone outside to one of 
these unfortunates would brighten her life immensely. 
It need not be a heavy tax on the one undertaking it. 
An occasional visit; a letter now and then; some little 
remembrance on birthdays and at holiday seasons, and 
similar kindnesses, which cost the giver little, would 
introduce a new element in the life of the inmate. The 
relation could be made to involve as much or as little as 
the visitor desired. Its peculiar advantage is that it 
involves less responsibility than almost any other form 
of friendly activity, and that it does not necessitate giv- 
ing up a fixed and regularly recurring portion of time. 
On the other hand, it does not offer any brilliant or far- 
reaching results ; it is merely a way of making life a 
little brighter to those for whom it is unusually dreary. 
Anyone who wishes to try it will usually have little 
trouble in obtaining the names of such unfortunates 
from the officials in charge of the institution. The latter 
will naturally wish to satisfy themselves of the character 
and good faith of the visitor, but that point once settled, 
they will ordinarily be most willing to cooperate. 

There are other classes in the almshouses for whom 
friendly effort is needed. The old, especially those who 
are of the better class, and who have been forced into 
the almshouse by some unexpected reverse, may find 
pleasure and relief from the thought of their misfor- 



SOME PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS 355 

tunes in an occasional friendly call and chat; reading 
matter and flowers may be sent; classes may sometimes 
be formed among certain inmates and handicrafts 
taught; volunteers from the outside may be of use in 
the entertainments given from time to time to the 
inmates; and other forms of usefulness, varying from 
place to place, may be found by consultation either with 
experienced workers, or with the officers of the insti- 
tutions. But ordinarily these other lines of effort will 
require more from those undertaking them than the 
informal friendliness suggested above. 

There are numerous forms of usefulness in institu- 
tions other than almshouses for those who have the time 
to undertake them. In children's hospitals, visitors who 
can be relied on to come regularly to amuse patients 
capable of being entertained are welcome. This work 
offers decided possibilities to those skilled in dealing 
with children. In one public hospital through which 
pass the poorest of its city, a young woman possessed 
of some leisure, a kindergarten training and much love 
for children, has formed a kindergarten class for all the 
children well enough to be interested by the games and 
songs and work. It is the first thing of the kind that 
has ever come into the lives of some of the little waifs 
who find their way there, and while it serves its purpose 
in amusing and training them while in the hospital, there 
can be little doubt that its influence reaches much 
further, affecting their lives long after they have passed 
on and given up their places to others. In homes for 
the aged there are numerous opportunities for useful- 
ness. Life is apt to become a dull routine there, and 
any one from the outside who will come in to read or 
sing or chat with the inmates receives a cordial welcome. 



356 HOW TO HELP 

But usually those undertaking any of these forms of 
friendliness must come at fixed and regular periods, and 
must be prepared to give definite time and effort to the 
service. It cannot be fitted into the chinks and crannies 
of a busy life as conveniently as the method first men- 
tioned. 

For those who can give a little money regularly, and 
who would like to have some personal knowledge of 
the effects of their gifts, combined giving is best. A 
group of persons willing to contribute a definite sum 
weekly, even though that sum be for each one very 
small, have before them a wide choice of usefulness. 
Generally any professional worker knows of families or 
individuals for whom continuous help should be pro- 
vided. If a group decides upon the amount it can give, 
and then applies to such a professional worker, there 
will be, as a rule, no difficulty about finding some object 
which should appeal to the sympathies of its members. 
There are old people whose rent must be paid, or young 
girls struggling to support invalid parents on insufficient 
wages, or cripples who can only partially support them- 
selves, or widows with children, or working men inca- 
pacitated by some accident or illness, for all of whom 
help is needed for a longer or shorter period. 

One good direction for such group contribution is 
along the line of securing a sufficient supply of nourish- 
ing food for consumptives. In many places, perhaps in 
most, the means for taking proper care of tuberculosis 
patients are sadly inadequate. Hospital or sanitarium 
treatment may be secured for some few, but many go 
uncared for in the earlier stages of the disease, when it 
might be arrested by proper treatment without the cost 
and the interruption to home life of segregation. Fre- 



SOME PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS 357 

quently one of the most difficult matters, in such a case, 
is to secure a sufficiency of nourishing food for the 
patient. He may be in the earliest stages of the trouble, 
able to keep about his daily work, but needing eggs and 
milk and substantial food of kinds and in quantities 
which the family income does not permit. Every doctor 
knows the perplexity of such cases. It is of little use to 
tell the patient to take such and such food; he cannot 
get it; and because he cannot, too frequently the disease 
gains ground until the harm is done and the sufferer is 
condemned to a lingering death. 

The cost of supplying proper food in such cases varies 
widely, according to what can be done by the patient 
himself or his family, and the local prices of the kinds of 
food needed. In some cases a very triflng addition to 
the family income will meet the need; in others several 
dollars a week may be required. The situation of these 
consumptives appeals strongly to most persons, but in 
many instances those who would be glad to help are 
restrained by the consciousness of how little they can 
give. The group idea meets this difficulty. Fifty cents 
or a dollar a month would go a very little way in helping 
a patient, but if eight or ten combine and each give this 
amount a great deal may be accomplished. 

Helping widowed or deserted mothers is another 
attractive field for group usefulness, and one which 
permits of wide variations, according to the circum- 
stances of the recipient and the givers. The matter of 
pensions for such women has already been discussed. 
While this is the most effective form of aid there are 
unquestionably some who would be glad to combine for 
the purpose of helping a woman with a family to care 
for, whose means do not allow them to provide a regular 



358 HOW TO HELP 

and sufficient pension. In such cases help might take 
the form of providing all necessary clothing for one 
child, or several, if the group felt inclined to take the 
heavier responsibility. It would be a relief to the 
mother to feel that she might dismiss all anxiety about 
the clothing of at least one child, and the work need not 
be a heavy burden for those who undertake it. A can- 
vass among their own relatives and friends would secure 
a considerable part of what would be needed. Time to 
secure discarded garments, and sufficient skill in needle- 
work to put them into good order, or to alter them to 
fit the child selected would be the principal demands. 
Some little money would be needed from time to time 
for shoes or other articles not easily procured second- 
hand, but as a general rule it would require but a small 
amount to make up deficiencies. 

For those who can combine to raise a regular amount 
of money for the benefit of some such woman, a very 
attractive way of applying it has been indicated by the 
system of so-called scholarships, which the women's 
clubs of Chicago, at the suggestion of Miss Addams, 
volunteered to provide for all children whose exclusion 
from employment when the new child labor laws went 
into effect would work real hardship to their families. 
The argument had often been made that the working 
children were the sole support of destitute and widowed 
mothers, and that the prohibition of their work would 
mean suffering of the severest type. To meet this pos- 
sible hardship in the enforcement of the law, the club 
women guaranteed that in every case where it should 
be found on careful examination that the child's wage 
was really needed to keep honest and industrious 
parents from suffering, they would supply the amount 



SOME PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS 



359 



which the child could earn weekly, on condition that he 
should be kept in school until the legal age for his with- 
drawal. The cases in which they have been called upon 
to supply these scholarships have been astonishingly 
few. 

There is no doubt that in some cases widowed or 
deserted mothers evade the school laws through a real 
need of their children's earnings, but more often in such 
circumstances the little ones fail to get a proper educa- 
tion not so much because they are deliberately kept out 
of school as because there L no sufficient incentive for 
keeping them in. If the woman has to be both father 
and mother, both bread-winner and home-maker, neces- 
sarily one function or the other must be slighted. If 
her work keeps her at home, it also keeps her so busy 
that she has little time for the care of the children. If 
there is a baby, naturally the eldest child is kept at home 
to look after it, or, if that is not allowed, she will still 
be kept out at frequent intervals to help whenever there 
is any rush of work. 

To the mother it presents itself as a very simple 
proposition. She must work that they may have food; 
the baby takes up her time and diminishes her earning 
capacity; how can it hurt Mamie or Katie or Nellie to 
stay at home from time to time to relieve her? "Sure, 
the. child goes most of the time, and she's that bright 
she can easy catch up with the others." Or, if there is 
no baby, there are apt to be occasions when errands 
must be run, or when some work comes up in which 
little fingers can make themselves useful; all the pres- 
sure of circumstances is toward keeping the children 
at home, and only an external and but vaguely under- 
stood authority makes for their attendance at school. 



360 HOW TO HELP 

If, on the other hand, the mother's work takes her away 
from home, she must ordinarily leave long before the 
children should start for school, and when the little 
people are left to get themselves off, it is not surprising 
if they are frequently late or absent. 

The scholarship plan strikes at the root of this trouble 
by supplying a strong incentive for regular and punc- 
tual attendance. Let a person or group of persons 
decide on some stated amount which they can make up 
weekly, and let this amount be offered to the family, its 
giving being conditional on the regular school going of 
the oldest child' — the oldest being selected because the 
temptation to keep this one at home is strongest. The 
amount should be paid each week on the presentation of 
a written statement from the child's teacher that he has 
been regular and punctual in his attendance. It should 
be understood that each absence will involve a deduction 
from the amount paid, and that each instance of tardi- 
ness will mean a similar though smaller deduction. 
These conditions should be enforced as strictly as would 
be done if the child were in a mill or an office. The 
givers should decide at the beginning what arrangement 
they will make about vacations, and what for absence 
from school due to the child's illness, so that from its 
outset the arrangement shall be on a strictly business 
basis. The child should feel that he is earning the 
money by attendance at school, and that, just as in any 
other case in which he might be earning a salary, its 
continuance depends upon his observance of the condi- 
tions agreed upon at the beginning. 

With these precautions, this is a very satisfactory way 
of giving help, not only assuring that the assistance 
shall reach a family in need of it, but that in the process 



SOME PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS 361 

of receiving help the child's teaching is made certain, 
and the whole attitude of the mother and children 
toward the school is altered. It is an unfortunate fact 
that in our dealing with the poor we usually are obliged 
to insist continually on the industrial side of life, and 
to lay all the emphasis on those traits which tend toward 
making or saving money. In putting into effect this 
method of help it is for once possible to lay stress on 
the non-commercial side of life, and to show that in the 
minds of many people and those not the least helpfully 
inclined, education has such a real and permanent value 
that it must be ensured to every child, even though 
accomplishing this end means a loss of money to those 
advocating it. 

Naturally the forms of helpful work open to volun- 
teers who can give but limited time or money contribu- 
tions vary from place to place, and no category of them 
can be given. The first step for those wishing to under- 
take personal work is to find the representatives of 
charitable interests in their own community and to 
place themselves in touch with the professional workers. 
Through these they may learn the requirements of their 
own particular field, may find where the greatest need 
lies, and where they can be of the most use. Often the 
work which a beginner can do may not seem particularly 
interesting or important; it may involve a good deal of 
monotony and appear to have no immediate results. 
Yet this is only what beginners in other branches 
expect, and what all novices must go through. There 
is work for all to do, and for those who have the 
patience to serve their apprenticeship, there are results 
to be gained worth all and more than all that the train- 
ing and the labor cost. 



APPENDIX 

So many good bibliographies of literature on philan- 
thropic subjects have already been published that it is 
hardly worth while to attempt an addition to their 
number. Beginners in such work, however, are often 
puzzled as to what will best suit their needs, and cannot 
always get from bibliographies the advice they desire on 
this point. It is for such students that the following 
suggestions are offered. 

Ordinarily, it is best to begin with some study of 
general principles. Charitable work has become so 
closely allied with all forms of social effort that general 
conditions must be taken into account before one can 
do good work, even among individuals. This involves 
some study of the whole situation, or, in other words, 
some attention to sociology. For those who are so 
situated that they can take a course in sociology under 
some competent instructor, or who can attend some 
school of philanthropy, the way is made easy. The 
majority, however, must perforce rest content with less 
thorough preparation, and their chief interest is to know 
what will most quickly, and with the least expenditure 
of effort and money, give them a working knowledge of 
the principles of modern philanthropy. 

Probably the best book for a beginner is Warner's 
American Charities. This volume, which appeared in 
1894, has become a classic of philanthropic literature, 
and there are no signs that its place will be taken by 
any more recent work, in spite of the rapid develop- 
ment of the subject. It gives a full and interesting 

362 



APPENDIX 363 

discussion of such subjects as the causes, social and 
individual, of poverty, the classification of dependents, 
with the methods of treatment adapted to the different 
groups, the inter-relation of relief agencies, the organi- 
zation of charity, and kindred topics. No matter in 
what branch of work one is especially interested, a study 
of this book forms an excellent introduction, to be fol- 
lowed by reading along the particular line chosen. 

The reports of the National Conference of Charities 
and Correction, which may be found in most public 
libraries, contain a fund of valuable information. Year 
by year this conference assembles representatives from all 
over the Union, and the papers read before it present the 
latest thought of the best known specialists in the various 
lines of charitable activity. By consulting the later 
volumes one learns what is now considered the best 
way of meeting a given need or difficulty; by consulting 
the earlier volumes, one learns by what steps and 
through what experiences the present position has been 
reached. For the student and the worker alike the 
value of these reports can hardly be overestimated. 

After studying general principles, as given by War- 
ner, some practical handbook of modern methods will 
be found useful. For those who wish to take up social 
rather than charitable work, Constructive and Preven- 
tive Philanthropy, by Joseph Lee, will give a good 
discussion of philanthropic work in its social aspects. 
Those who wish to undertake direct work among the 
poor will find the subject treated concisely, practically 
and helpfully in The Practice of Charity, by Edward T. 
Devine, Secretary of the New York Charity Organiza- 
tion Society. The same subject is discussed in fuller 
detail and with a more extended consideration of its 



364 



APPENDIX 



social effects in the same author's Principles of Relief. 
Both of these works have met with warm commenda- 
tion, and both are of much practical helpfulness. 
Friendly Visiting Among the Poor, by Miss Mary 
Richmond, Secretary of the Philadelphia Society for 
Organizing Charity, is likewise an exceedingly useful 
book. The author's long experience, both in dealing 
with the needs of the poor and in training friendly 
visitors, has rendered her peculiarly qualified to explain 
the actual problems and difficulties which are sure to 
confront the volunteer. The work is practical through- 
out and the bibliographical references given in each 
chapter are especially useful to anyone wishing to 
extend his reading along a given line. 

The reports of the larger societies will be found very 
suggestive, and may usually be had on request. The 
annual reports of such bodies as the National Con- 
sumers' League, the National Committee on Child Labor 
and the National Association for the Control and Pre- 
vention of Tuberculosis are both interesting and vitally 
important. 

A good magazine is almost essential in order that one 
may keep in touch with the progressive development of 
thought along all charitable lines. Undoubtedly the 
best for this purpose is the magazine known first as 
Charities, then as Charities and The Commons, and now 
as The Survey, published by the New York Charity 
Organization Society. It is issued weekly, and is a 
necessity for any worker who wishes to keep informed 
on topics of charitable and philanthropic interest. 

With the exception of the reports of the National 
Conference, the above books may all easily be owned by 
anyone who from choice or necessity wishes to possess 



APPENDIX 365 

his own tools of the trade. For convenience sake, cost 
and publisher are appended: 

American Charities, Amos G. Warner (T. Y. Crowell 
& Co., New York), $1.75. 

The Practice of Charity, E. T. Devine (A. Wessels 
Co., New York), 65 cents. 

Constructive and Preventive Philanthropy, Joseph 
Lee (Macmillan Co., New York), $1.00. 

Friendly Visiting Among the Poor, Mary E. Rich- 
mond (Macmillan Co., New York), $1.00. 

The Survey (105 East 226. St., New York), subscrip- 
tion for one year, $2.00. 

Those who wish to go into the matter more deeply, 
may find some guidance in the following list secured by 
the Harvard Social Service Committee in 1902. Wish- 
ing to establish a library on philanthropic and industrial 
subjects, this body sent a letter of enquiry to a number 
of prominent workers in these fields, asking them to 
contribute a list of books, preferably ten in number, 
which were especially helpful to them, and to designate 
the one most helpful in each case. 

"This letter," says Charities, "was sent to the fol- 
lowing : 

Miss Jane Addams, Chicago. 

Frederic Almy, Buffalo. 

Philip W. Ayres, Concord. 

Charles W. Birtwell, Boston. 

Miss Mary L. Birtwell, Cambridge, Mass. 

Dr. Jeffrey R. Brackett, Baltimore. 

Miss Mary Willcox Brown, Baltimore. 

Edward T. Devine, New York City. 

Robert E. Ely, New York City. 

Homer Folks, New York City. 



366 APPENDIX 

Miss Fannie Fowke, London. 

John M. Glenn, Baltimore. 

Hastings H. Hart, Chicago. 

Miss Mary Richmond, Philadelphia. 

Joseph Lee, Boston. 

C. S. Loch, London. 

Mrs. Charles Russell Lowell, New York City. 

Miss Frances R. Morse, Boston. 

Jacob A. Riis, New York City. 

Miss Zilpha D. Smith, Boston. 

Frank Tucker, New York City. 

Robert A. Woods, Boston. 

"The replies received from these advisers seem to 
indicate more adequately than any list of books hitherto 
made, what is the consensus of competent opinion con- 
cerning the books most necessary for students of 
philanthropy, and what is regarded as the order of their 
practical importance. In the list as printed below, the 
numbers preceding the name of the book indicate how 
many times each book was recommended. 
(12) Friendly Visiting Among the Poor, Mary E. 

Richmond. 
(12) American Charities, Amos G. Warner. 
(10) The Practice of Charity, Edward T. Devine. 
( 8) The City Wilderness, Robert A. Woods. 
( 8) How the Other Half Lives, Jacob A. Riis. 
( 7) Rich and Poor, Mrs. Bernard Bosanquet. 
( 6) Philanthropy and Social Progress, Jane Addams. 
( 6) The Poor in Great Cities, Jacob A. Riis. 
( 6) Letters of Edward Denison, Baldwyn Leighton. 
( 5) Practical Socialism, S. A. and H. O. Barnett. 
( 4) Homes of the London Poor, Octavia Hill. 
(4) The Industrial Revolution, Arnold Toynbee. 



APPENDIX 367 

4) Charity Organization, Charles S. Loch. 
4) Life and Labor of the People, Charles Booth. 
4) Aspects of the Social Problem, Bernard Bosan- 
quet. 
Hull House Maps and Papers, by Residents of 
Hull House Social Settlement, Chicago, 111. 
3) Standard of Life, Mrs. Bernard Bosanquet. 
3) Dependent, Defective and Delinquent Classes, 

Charles R. Henderson. 
3) Arnold Toynbee, Lord Milner. 
3) Up From Slavery, Booker T. Washington. 
3) Out of Mulberry Street, Jacob A. Riis. 
2) Handbook of Charity Organization, S. Humph- 
reys Gurteen. 
History of Socialism, Thomas Kirkup. 
The Jukes, Richard S. Dugdale. 
2) Punishment and Reformation, Fred H. Wines. 
2) Substitutes for the Saloon, Raymond Calkins. 
2) Theory of the Leisure Class, Thornstein Veblen. 
2) America's Working People, Charles B. Spahr. 
2) English Social Movements, Robert A. Woods. 
2) Life of William Morris, Machail. 
Neighborhood Guilds, Stanton Coit. 
Occasional Papers of the Charity Organization 

Society (London). 
Outline of Practical Sociology, Carrol D. Wright. 
Essays, Octavia Hill. 
History of Charity Organization in the United 

States, Charles D. Kellogg, Chairman. 
Chalmers on Charity, N. Masterman. 
Encyclopedia of Social and Political Reform, 
W. D. P. Bliss." 
(Charities, Vol. X, pp. 549, 550.) 



Principles of Relief 

By DR. .EDWARD T. DEVINE, General Secretary of 
the Charity Organization Society of New York. 

" No one who is interested either historically or practically in the 
subject of charity can afford to neglect this volume." 

The Atlantic Monthly. 

" Rich in thought-productive suggestions for those who read with 
open mind." — Chicago Record Herald. 

Cloth, 12mo, $2.00 net 



Modern Methods of Charity 

By CHARLES RICHMOND HENDERSON of the 
University of Chicago, assisted by others. 

An account of the systems of relief, public and private, in the 
principal countries having modern methods. This work is 
essential to those who would know what the experience of the 
world's workers in charity, official or private, has been. 

Cloth, 8vo, $3.50 net 

Supervision and Education in Charity 

By DR. JEFFREY R. BRACKETT, President of the 
Department of Charities, Baltimore. 

CONTENTS: — The Pioneers ; Public Agencies ; Private Associa- 
tions for Supervision ; National Conferences ; Local Confer- 
ences ; Educational Service of Associations for Organizing 
Charity ; Instruction in Educational Institutions ; Training 
for Work ; Women's Clubs and Associations. 

Cloth, 16mo, $1.00 net 



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AMERICAN SOCIAL PROGRESS 
SERIES 

Edited by SAMUEL McCUNE LINDSAY, Ph.D ., 

Professor of Social Legislation 

A series of handbooks for the student and general reader, 
giving the results of the newer social thought and of recent 
scientific investigations of the facts of American social life 
and institutions. Each volume about 200 pages. 

1. The New Basis of Civilization 

By PROFESSOR S. N. PATTEN, Ph.D., LL.D., 
University of Pennsylvania. 

Cloth, 12mo, $1.00 net; by mail, $1.12 

2. Standards of Public Morality 

By ARTHUR TWINING HADLEY, Ph.D.,LL.D., 

President of Yalg University. 

Cloth, 12mo, $1.00 net; by mail, $1.12 

3. Legislation and Administration for Social 
Welfare 

By PROF. JEREMIAH W. JENKS, Ph.D.,LL.D., 

Cornell University. 

(In Preparation) 

4. Misery and its Causes 

By EDWARD T.DEVINE, Ph.D.,LL.D., Columbia 

University. 

Cloth, 12mo, $1.25 net; by mail, $1.36 



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The Tenement House Problem 

Edited by ROBERT W. DE FOREST and 
LAWRENCE VEILLER. 

The most authoritative and comprehensive work on this subject, 
written by various authors and illustrated with eighty photographs 
and charts. 

VOLUME ONE 

Contents /—Tenement Reform in New York since 1901 ; The 
Tenement House Problem ; Tenement House Reform in New 
York City, 1834-1900 ; Housing Conditions in Buffalo ; Housing 
Conditions and Tenement Laws in Leading American Cities ; 
Housing Conditions and Tenement Laws in Leading European 
Cities ; A Statistical Study of New York's Tenement Houses ; 
The Non-enforcement of the Tenement House Laws in New 
Buildings ; Tenement House Fires in New York ; Tenement 
House Fire Escapes in New York and Brooklyn ; Back to Back 
Tenements ; Tenement House Sanitation ; Small Houses for 
Working Men ; Financial Aspects of Recent Tenement House 
Operations in New York; The Speculative Building of Tenement 
Houses ; Tenement Evils as seen by the Tenants ; Tenement 
Evils as seen by an Inspector ; Tuberculosis and the Tene- 
ment House Problem ; The Relation of Tuberculosis to the 
Tenement House Problem. 

VOLUME TWO 

Contents : — Parks and Playgrounds for Tenement Districts ; 
Prostitution as a Tenement House Evil ; Policy, A Tenement 
House Evil; Public Baths; A Plan for Tenements in Connection 
with a Municipal Park; Foreign Immigration and the Tenement 
House in New York City ; Appendices. 

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The Development of Thrift 

By MARY W. BROWN, Secretary of The Henry 

Watson Children's Aid Society, Baltimore. 

" An excellent little Manual, a study of various agencies, their 
scope and their educating influences for thrift. It abounds in 
suggestions of value." — Chicago Inter-Ocean. 
Cloth, 12mo, $1.00 net 

Friendly Visiting Among the Poor 

By MARY E. RICHMOND, General Secretary of The 
Charity Organization Society of Baltimore. 

" A small book full of inspiration, yet intensely practical." 

Charles Richmond Henderson 
Cloth, 16mo, $1.00 net 

The Care of Destitute, Neglected 
and Delinquent Children 

By HOMER FOLKS, Ex-Commissioner of Public 

Charities, New York City. 

CONTENTS : — Conditions prevalent at the opening of the Nine- 
teenth Century ; Public Care of Destitute Children, 1801-1875 ; 
Private Charities for Destitute Children, 1801-1875 ; Removal 
of Children from Almshouse ; The State School and Placing 
Out System ; The County Children's Home System ; The 
System of Public Support in Private Institutions ; The 
Boarding Out and Placing Out System ; Laws and Societies 
for the Rescue of Neglected Children ; Private Charities for 
Destitute and Neglected Children, 1875-1900 ; Delinquent 
Children ; Present Tendencies. 

Cloth, 12mo, $1.00 net 

Constructive and Preventive Philanthropy 

By JOSEPH LEE, Vice-President of The Massachusetts 

Civic League. 

Contents : — Essence and Limitations of the Subject ; Before 
1860; Savings and Loans ; The Home; Health and Building 
Laws, Model Tenements ; The Setting of the Home ; Vacation 
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